Courtesy of Bruce Krasting.
The Congressional Budget Office produced two reports on Obama Care yesterday. The first (A – Link) did an analysis of what the cost would be if we just junked the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The second (B – Link) looked at the consequences to ACA as a result of the recent Supreme Court decision.
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The House has recently put forward a bill to scrap almost all of ACA. This legislation is not going anywhere, it’s just a “show pony” for Republicans, so they can say they voted to repeal an unpopular law. The CBO is required to review all legislation, even if if it has not a ghost of a chance of passing
The CBO concluded that repeal would cost (increase deficit) by$109Bn over ten-years. This number assumes that government spending would actually decline by $890Bn, but the government would collect $1Trillion less in revenue.
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When Justice Roberts made his now famous opinion that affirmed the constitutionality of ACA, he also made two important changes. He said that the government could not force a citizen to pay a penalty, but it could levy a tax, and he said that States could not be forced to provide Medicaid to those who did not have health care insurance.
The decision by Roberts does change the economics of ACA. The CBO concluded that 4 million people would not have access to health coverage as a result of the Medicaid “opt out” that the States now have. The reduction in the number of people covered translate to “savings” that amount to $84Bn over ten years.
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