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CBO Says Baucus Bill a Big Money Saver
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)
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Following on Sen. Kent Conrad's request, the Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the Finance Committee's draft bill--not just for a 10 year window, but for a 20 year window--and concluded that it would be a big money saver. From 2010 through 2019, the legislation, if enacted as is, would reduce the federal deficit by $49 billion. And, in a rough projection, CBO found that the bill would continue to provide savings relative to current law, for the 10 years thereafter. Though there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty, from 2020 through 2029 the legislation would save on the order of .5 percent of GDP
As I noted yesterday, Conrad requested an extended outlook, likely with the intent of giving this bill a political boost. Conrad and the "Gang of Six" worked closely with CBO chief Doug Elmendorf while crafting the bill, and almost certainly knew that it would score favorably, particularly in comparison to the Senate HELP bill and House legislation, which do less to control the rate of health care inflation.
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bluebell
September 16, 2009 6:29 PM
It's not difficult to be a big money saver if you dump most of the cost on the working class and the states I expect. Oh, and we're cutting Medicare and squeezing providers and nursing homes. This is just a shell game. We're robbing Peter to pay Paul and we're supposed to believe Peter isn't going to notice.
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Docb
September 17, 2009 12:31 PM in reply to bluebell
Sure--- it does nothing but mandate a penalty for the middle class or a tax but gives HC corporations 30+million new premiums and customers--with no protection on costs, competition, or procedures offered!
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mcc
September 16, 2009 6:45 PM
As I understand the Baucus bill creates a new tax that the other bills don't contain. This tax generates a lot of money. The tax is also weird and regressive to the point it somehow managed to get Rockefeller and Snowe in agreement against it.
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Powkat
September 16, 2009 7:11 PM
O course it is - it demands that everyone buy insurance, but then provides very little in the way of subsidies for those who can't afford it,lets the insurance companies charge based on age instead of pre-existing conditins AND it fines anyone who refuses to participate in this sham. It wasn't written for real people, or even for Republicans - Max was paying back his donors.
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bluebell
September 16, 2009 7:29 PM in reply to Powkat
And guess who really gets stiffed - the working stiffs, of course. You remember those folks. Once upon a time, back when we had a party that supported labor, those folks used to vote for Democrats. So the barely getting by folks are going to be taxed 13% of their income (Oh yes, it is a tax, it is not optional even though the monehy goes to plutocrats instead of bureaucrats). Somebody do the math. What percentage of their income do the wealthy pay for the same insurance policy?
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FreeRider
September 16, 2009 9:41 PM in reply to bluebell
Do you really think you're enlightening anybody here? Everybody knows this bill is a turkey and what's in it. You're acting as if you have to convince people here that the Baucus bill was bad when everybody called this a piece of shit three months ago.
But since EVERYTHING is bad to you . . . YAWN.
Give the "back in the day when we were young and pure" BS a rest!
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AnswerFrog
September 17, 2009 9:37 AM in reply to bluebell
Strangely, Grassley doesn't like the individual mandate either.
I say either:
1) Ind. mandate + generous subsidies + public option
or
2) No ind. mandate, and insurers can go fuck themselves
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The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
September 16, 2009 9:22 PM
Well, gee if CBO says something will happen ten or twenty years in the future, that makes it true. Because they infallibly can see into the future with Using Only the Power of Their Minds and their lofty nonpartisanship. Their perfect track record on past bills proves it.
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trblmkr
September 17, 2009 1:23 AM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
Kent sent vent, CBO went and bent.
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AnswerFrog
September 17, 2009 9:31 AM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
How do we fire that partisan asshole at the CBO?
I didn't hear much from these motherfuckers when Bush wanted to spend $1 T on Iraq, nor when he wanted to spend $1.3 T on tax cuts fo the rich.
where were their 20 year projections on Bush's medicare drug plan?
CBO = Heckuva job "saving" us money. Drowning in debt for the past 8 years, and now when someone tries to introduce competition, you beat the drum of "fiscal austerity".
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The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
September 17, 2009 9:48 AM in reply to AnswerFrog
To be fair, the handful of Democrats who weren't busying themselves fawning at Bush's feet were waving CBO projections around the way Republicans are now. And to be fair, they were as wrong about the cost of Medicare Part D as they probably are now about the five committee bills (percentage wise, I mean). The fiscal impact of tax cuts is actually pretty easy to project, however, and it's the only thing they can do with sufficient accuracy to justify the influence their projections have on legislation. [Insert shameless, classless plug for my thus far not very popular reader blog about the absurdity of the deference accorded to CBO estimates here.]
What's really amazing to me is how the word "trillion" provokes an epidemic of anyphalactic shock now, when it didn't induce so much as an itch in anyone when Bush was busy saving our nation's dwindling supply of rich people from the horrors of progressive taxation.
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afisher
September 17, 2009 9:51 AM
If the only concern about Healthcare is to cut the cost to the government, then the Baucus Bill does that. But if the concern is to assure that uninsured have affordable healthcare, then this bill clearly misses the mark. Mandating that all Americans have insurance via the Private Insurer's or be fined is a punative action. Ask the uninsured why they don't have health insurance and it is COST, so now the Baucus Bill wants to penalize those same individuals, essentially screwing these individuals coming and going.
According to his bill, if you have a pre-existing condition, you have to wait 6 months before you can apply for a high risk pool insurance. Now assuming that you can afford the premium, after a 6 month delay, isn't that delay tactic actually a Death Panel, the exact thing the Right Wing Protestors and Luntz followers been attacking the Dems for? Now that the Senate Finance Committee have given Private Insurance the right to deny care in their bill, the GOP now say that Private Insurance Death Panels are insufficient to cut government cost.
These politicians seem to be much more focused on re-election campaign finance building and kissing the behind of those benefactors than actually working for the American People.
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