CBO: Health Care Repeal Would Up Deficit By $230 Billion

Amanda Terkel
HuffPost
First Posted: 01- 6-11

WASHINGTON -- Repealing health care reform will add $230 billion to the deficit over the next decade, leave 32 million fewer people with insurance and lead to higher costs for those who are covered, the Congressional Budget Office said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Thursday.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf elaborated on the analysis in a blog post:

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.

House Democrats quickly pounced on the report. "The Congressional Budget [O]ffice confirms that just one day after taking over the House, the Republican rhetoric on fiscal discipline doesn't meet the reality test ..." Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.

The CBO has been touted by both major political parties as a key arbiter on the possible costs of major legislation -- as long as the office's conclusions bolster their case. During the health care debate that dominated nearly a full year of the last congressional session, then-House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) repeatedly invoked the budget office's figures in order to argue that health care reform was a bad idea.

(More here.)