{"id":9739,"date":"2010-03-18T13:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T20:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9739"},"modified":"2010-03-18T13:24:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T20:24:00","slug":"cbo-releases-health-care-reform-score-house-likely-to-vote-on-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9739","title":{"rendered":"CBO releases Health Care Reform score; House likely to vote on Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CBO has released their analysis of the Senate HCR bill combined with the “sidecar” reconciliation bill<\/a>. You can read the CBO analysis here (pdf file)<\/a>, but the most important numbers <\/a>are:<\/p>\n

Reduce deficits: $138 billion in the first ten years. ($1.2 trillion in the second decade, although that’s not a precise number at all, just an estimate).
\nCosts: $940 billion in the first ten years.
\nMoney spent making private insurance more affordable (with subsidies): $466 billion in ten years.
\nMoney spent expanding Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP): $434 billion in ten years.
\nMoney spent on small employer credit (making it more affordable for small employers to offer health insurance to their employees): $40 billion in ten years.<\/p>\n

Currently uninsured Americans who will be insured: 32 million. (And the remaining uninsured people will in effect be getting low-cost catastrophic health care insurance, in exchange for the penalty they pay.)<\/p>\n

So where does the money come from? $17 billion (over ten years) from people who refuse to buy insurance paying a penalty; $52 billion (over ten years) from businesses who choose to pay a penalty rather than provide coverage for employees; $32 billion (over ten years) from the “excise tax” on the most expensive insurance plans; I-can’t-find-the-number-but-it’ll-be-tens-of-billions-over-a-decade from extending the payroll tax to some currently untaxed income; and nearly 500 billion in savings from Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n

Democrats are also claiming <\/a>that the bill “extends Medicare\u2019s solvency by at least 9 years.” As far as I can judge, that’s not true; the savings are being spent on Health Care Reform, not on extending Medicare’s solvency. (This is the “double-counting” that Representative Ryan – and the CBO<\/a> – have been talking about.)<\/p>\n

It’s going to be a very close vote<\/a> in the House (although Kucinich<\/a>, surprisingly, is now going to vote for the bill).<\/p>\n

So this bill will raise some taxes, and finds a lot of savings in current Medicare and Medicaid programs. In return, it extends health insurance coverage to millions of Americans, makes Medicaid and CHIP available to millions of currently non-covered Americans, and heavily regulates what insurance companies can do (so that abusive crap like this<\/a> stops happening).<\/p>\n

If you support this bill, please call your representative in the House and let them know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CBO has released their analysis of the Senate HCR bill combined with the “sidecar” reconciliation bill. You can read the CBO analysis here (pdf file), but the most important numbers are: Reduce deficits: $138 billion in the first ten … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}