Ezra reports on the CBO's new scoring of the health care bill with reconciliation fixes [my emphasis below]:
According to a Democratic source, CBO has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score later today. But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years — so, 2020 to 2029 — it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.
To put this in context, that's more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.
Great news. We may have liftoff soon, folks.
Please share widely!
I’m looking forward to the Republicans straight up lying about the costs of the bill over the next week or so despite the overwhelming contrary facts.
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p>Evidence just doesn’t matter for them.
So we are adding 40 million people to a system that cannot handle the current volume? Didnt the govt tell us that the big dig was a 2.5 billion dollar project? I see this exploding into more taxes for me, less care for me , thanks Dems!
how one can spend $940 billion in new money while reducing the deficit by $130 billion (and you might want to reconsider that bold faced subsequent 10 year emphasis Charley – I read the CBO report and they’re making no such exact claim).
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p>So, if you’re going to increase spending by $940 billion yet claim that the deficit will actually go down by $130 billion, the only conclusion is that somehow you are taking in $1.07 trillion in new revenue (cost savings don’t factor into that equation because those only drove your expenditures back down to the $940 billion mark – no other conclusion mathematically).
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p>So now the focus will turn to how you’re increasing taxes and fees by $1 trillion (and remember, this isn’t even the tax increases on income rates that everyone knows are coming – this is extra stuff).
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p>Some examples:
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p>3.8% Medicare tax now imposed on unearned income for higher end workers (currently no Medicare tax on unearned income). So say you have capital gains tax rates now of 15%; the impending increase to 20-25% anticipated by everyone now goes up another 3.8%. So 15% could reach 25%. If you’re a democrat you’d just say no biggie, just a 10% increase. If you’re the one subject, you’re saying my capital gains taxes just went up 66%.
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p>Medicare Advantage clipped by $156 billion over the next 10 years; that will sure grab the attention of healthy Medicare recipients.
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p>Imposing caps on FSA accounts.
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p>Increasing 7.5% Medical expense threshold to 10%. For those facing high health costs, that won’t help.
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p>$15 billion from a 10% excise tax on tanning salons (huh?).
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p>The party has just started when people start digesting the fine print.
Yeah, can’t wait for the revolt of the well-heeled, and the insurance companies making mad crazy bank on Medicare Advantage.
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p>I. Do. Not. Care.
to the bank.
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p>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03…
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p>I’m a pension actuary. If I run valuations with the client dictating the final results, I lose my license. No way to run a railroad (or come up with legitimate projections).
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p>Know few on this board don’t subscribe to the “eat the rich” mentality, but there is more than enough in the revenue fine print that are going to increase costs substantially for the average person.
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p>Just saying…