Tag Archives: American Spectator

CBO: Health-care reform bill cuts deficit by $1.3 trillion over 20 years, covers 95%

I still think the CBO projections are valid even after reading this criticism,

CBO Confirms That Without Accounting Gimmicks, Obamacare Adds to Deficits

The CBO believes that Health-care reform bill will cut the deficit by $1.3 trillion over 20 years and cover  cover 95% of the US population.

The CBO based their projections on current law and bills like to pass at the time which has passed since then…therefore, the original CBO statement stands and the criticism raysmon referenced fails.

The title, “CBO Confirms That Without Accounting Gimmicks, Obamacare Adds to Deficits”, is at best misleading and at worst heavily biased.

The criticism raysmom brought up are based on a bill that has not passed yet and likely will not which increase payments to physicians for Medicare. 

The report was also based on bills that had not passed at the time but passed subsequent to publishing the criticism article.  Details are below…

The criticisms of the CBO report are answered in detail here by the CBO,

http://www.house.gov/budget_republicans/press/2007/pr20100319letter.pdf

In short, the major criticism is based on a proposed bill originally,

H.R. 3961- Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 (the title was not changed even though it has nothing to do with Medicare or Physicians…my guess is that they could not get enough votes or some technical reason why they could not change the title…silly)

 http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-3961

However, H.R. 3961 (the one that passed) has nothing about physicians and Medicare only the Patriot Act and intelligence related matters.

The part that has not passed which increases Medicare payments to doctors,

H. Res. 903: Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 3962) to provide affordable, quality health care…

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hr111-903

is a major argument for the criticism.  The bill will likely not pass as written.

The criticism also stated that the CBO estimate was based on this bill not passed at the time,

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Cadillac tax)

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR03590:@@@L&summ2=m&

which passed subsequent to the criticism places a tax in the future on very high end insurance policies for executives and cuts Medicare payments in some cases.