Thursday, July 26, 2012

CBO:It will cost the deficit more to repeal Obamacare than to keep it


Well, GOP. Hope you are a little embarrassed this morning.  The Congressional Budget Office “scored” the Republican bill just passed by the House to repeal Obamacare and the impact of the Supreme Court decision on the health care reform legislation.  Since 2010, all we have heard from the GOP was that it would cost trillions and bankrupt us; we cannot take on a new entitlement program; we cannot afford it.
All along, the CBO had said “not true”; it would reduce the deficit.  The Simpson Bowles report came to the same conclusion. The GOP response has always been: the Democrats just asked the CBO the wrong questions and tried to shoot the messenger on this one issue. 
 Yesterday, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, the Congressional Budget Office “scored” the repeal legislation and concluded that  the deficit would be hurt more by repeal of Obamacare than if it was sustained in the form it is now.  That is because the costs have a “pay for” and the cost savings built into the Affordable Care Act would relieve  health care costs to the federal government.  According to an Associated Press report, and carried in the Denver Post yesterday, repeal would itself “boost the deficit by $109 billion from 2013 to 2022.” From the letter by CBO director Douglas Elmendorf: “Repealing the health care law will lead to an increase in budget deficits over the coming decade”.  Per the AP report: “The law’s mix of spending cuts and tax increases would more than offset new spending to cover the uninsured people, Elmendorf explained”. …”The Congressional Budget Office consistently projected that Obama’s overhaul will reduce the deficit…At the time  it was approved in 2010, CBO estimated the law would reduce the deficit by $143 billion from 2010 to 2010…though the CBO gave no updated estimate …(but that) about3 million fewer uninsured people will gain health coverage because of last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting states more leeway, and will cut the federal costs by $84 billion”.
The next time you hear someone continue to claim Obamacare will drive us into bankruptcy,  you can be justified in responding with “horse feathers”.
Note that I did not post yesterday’s column in the Sky Hi News. It was essentially a reworking of the blog regarding the Aurora theater massacre that I posted the morning after the tragedy.

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