cbo: repealing health care reform will add $230 billion to the deficit

[saz]

the non-partisan congressional budget office has determined that repealing the just passed health insurance reform legislation would add an additional $230 billion to the deficit over the next ten years, resulting in 32 million americans without insurance while leading to higher costs for those who are covered. cbo director doug elmendorf shared all of this information in a letter written to house speaker john boehner, and elaborated online (http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1750):


As a result of changes in direct spending and revenues, CBO expects that enacting H.R. 2 would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012-2019 period by a total of roughly $145 billion (on the basis of the original estimate), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. Adding two more years (through 2021) brings the projected increase in deficits to something in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes.

following 2019, the cbo has concluded that repealing health insurance reform would continue to add to the deficit:


by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP (http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1750), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate." In the following decade, the office report concludes, "the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger.

the cbo has also concluded that 32 million would lose coverage by 2019 due to a repeal, resulting in approximately 54 million americans without insurance.

meanwhile, congressional republicans appear to have missed the memo that they do not control the senate and the presidency, so anything they pass in the house of representatives will go nowhere.

[travesty]

If they repeal it and do nothing... I don't think that's the plan.

CBO has lost all credibility with me anyway, especially with this healthcare shit. Even they admit they can only estimate based on the legislation and that they can't consider even basic outside variables (like insurance companies deciding to raise rates now to offset losses later.duh) so thier numbers really are, for all intents and purposes, worthless .....unless they happen to side with your particular politics.

[saz]

according to eric cantor's spin.

[yeahwho]

There is a solution and it is called Single Payer. Or at least start with the Public Option. Both are possible if we grow up and face reality for a change.

Our lives and financial viability will depend on it.

[kaiser soze]

Will someone THINK of the Insurance Companies!!

Sick children be damned!

Here's a solution - reinvest the billions being funneled to kill people in foreign countries to help your sick people here.

Pro-Life many of those fighting logical healthcare they are not.

[p-branez]

Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) duckspeaks an answer (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40965541/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts) to the question of health care repeal on "Meet the Press" this morning. I guess the main opposition is that the health care reform will "kill jobs" in the private sector rather than unduly add to the federal deficit.

Watch the next section on "job creation, economy" for more political and economic hypocrisy. Just like Vice President Biden last week, he references "economists" who say that 2011 will be better than 2011.

And then this...

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the debt. Back in 2006, both you and then-Senator Obama opposed raising the debt ceiling. And in a floor statement, then-Senator Obama said this: "Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that `the buck stop here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

Well, here we are now and the Treasury secretary says we have to raise that debt ceiling again come spring. The president's economic adviser says you don't play chicken with this, that you have to raise the debt ceiling or else if you don't it's catastrophic. So which is it? Is raising the debt ceiling a failure of leadership as then-Senator Obama said in 2006, which you agreed with, or is it something you have to do now to ward off catastrophe in the economy?

SEN. REID: I agree with the speaker, John Boehner. John Boehner said in November, when he was asked questions similar to the one you've asked me, "What are we going to do about this raising the debt ceiling?" He said, "we have to act as adults." And that's true. We, we can't, we can't back out on the money we owe the rest of the world. We can't, we can't do as the Gingrich crowd did a few years ago, close government. Doing that, we cut off Social Security checks and the whole works.

MR. GREGORY: Senator, 2006 you voted against raising the debt ceiling, and so did Senator Obama. Was that not an adult step?

SEN. REID: I have been in Congress a long time, and 99 percent of the time I have voted for increasing the debt. And we have to do it this time.

MR. GREGORY: But why didn't you do it then?

SEN. REID: I don't really know what vote you're talking about. I've cast about 15,000 votes. When...

MR. GREGORY: But you opposed raising the debt ceiling in 2006, and now you're saying to do so is not an adult step to take.

SEN. REID: I'm saying today that we have to raise the debt ceiling. There's no alternative. In 2006, the debt ceiling was raised. Of course it had to be raised then, it has to be raised now.