GOP health-care reform cost: $61 billion, cut deficit $68 billion

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CBO director Douglas Elmendorf scored the new proposal from House Republicans on health-care reform and gave them plenty of ammunition to use against expansive and expensive Democratic plans for government takeovers. Their plan, which relies on interstate competition, HSAs, and tort reform, would only cost $61 billion in the first ten years of the plan — or slightly less than 6% of what Democrats plan to spend to overhaul the entire system:

This evening, CBO released a preliminary analysis of a substitute amendment to H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, proposed by Representative John Boehner, the Republican Leader in the House of Representatives. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the amendment would reduce federal deficits by $68 billion over the 2010-2019 period; it would also slightly reduce federal budget deficits in the following decade, relative to those projected under current law, with a total effect during that decade that is in a broad range between zero and one-quarter percent of gross domestic product.

Unlike the Democratic proposals, the bill would actually reduce premiums:

CBO anticipates that the combination of provisions in the amendment would reduce average private health insurance premiums per enrollee in the United States, relative to what they would be under current law-by 7 percent to 10 percent in the small group market, by 5 percent to 8 percent for individually purchased insurance, and by zero to 3 percent in the large group market. Those are averages, however, and they are subject to a great deal of uncertainty; some individuals and families in each market would see different results.

Hot Air Blog Archive GOP health-care reform cost: $61 billion, cut deficit $68 billion

Hmmm, I may not be an economist, but $61 billion looks alot less than $1.8 trillion...

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Nancy Pelosi tried selling the notion that her version of ObamaCare would only cost $900 billion in the first ten years, later bumped to over $1 trillion when looking at gross costs. Harry Reid’s Senate version promises to come in at around the same level. However, both versions rely on three years of delay in implementing their spending plans, which allows for accrual of revenues from new taxes as well as a false sense of the real ten-year costs in the bills. The New York Post reads the CBO report and discovers that the actual ten-year cost is twice what Pelosi claimed:

Don’t buy the claim that the Sen ate health-care bill is substantially more moderate than the House measure. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s legislation is even more onerous than the package created by Sen. Max Baucus and now championed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the larger story is how similar the two Democratic bills are.
First, we need to get past the misleading accounting games. Each bill is routinely “scored” for its 10-year costs from 2010-19. Yet this includes several years when the spending wouldn’t yet have kicked in. According to the Congressional Budget Office, fully 99.9 percent of the Pelosi bill’s costs would hit from 2013 onward. Similarly, 98.3 percent of Reid’s spending would come after 2014.
If you start the tally when the bills’ spending would actually start (in 2013 for the House bill and 2014 for the Senate bill), then the bills’ real 10-year costs become clear — and are remarkably similar.
The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.
And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.

What does that do to the deficit? According to the CBO, the first ten years of the Pelosi plan would add $650 billion to the deficit, while the Reid plan in the Senate would hike it by $740 billion. And that assumes that one can count the money coming from Medicare cuts as true deficit reduction, which is arguable, since the Medicare system is already deeply in the red.
In other words, both Democrats have relied on accounting gimmicks to lie about the true costs of the bills. This may not come as much of a shock to Hot Air readers, but the scope of the lie is simply breathtaking. If this bill was truly cost-beneficial to the country, its advocates would not be spending this much effort to cover up its costs.

Hot Air Blog Archive Actual 10-year cost of Pelosi Plan: $1.8 trillion

Pelosi would raise Americans’ taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.

I especially like this part, how about you folks...

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Welcome to “Pelosi Plan Exposed: 12 Truths about PelosiCare and Republican Alternatives.” Over the course of 12 hours we will take an in-depth look at the Pelosi health care bill set for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in the coming days. We will also explore common-sense Republican alternatives and explain why they will give the American people the health care reform they need and deserve.

This will be a 12-hour live online telecast beginning at 1pm ET on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

12 Truths | GOP

Check out this live telecast and get some useful info to give back to your legislators...
Should be a barnburner...