CBO Scores Kinda Sorta HELP Bill
Ted Kennedy and Jeff Bingaman (HELP Committee photo)
Latish yesterday the Congressional Budget Office released a preliminary score of the draft health care legislation under consideration by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The news was not pretty. On the one hand, the bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over ten years. That’s a lot of money, though not in my view too much money to spend on something important. But what you get for the money is very disappointing—a net reduction in the quantity of the uninsured of only about 16 million people. When you spend a trillion bucks on your universal health care bill, you’re generally looking to get a lot closer than that to a world in which everyone has health insurance.
Now the CBO does caution that this is only an estimate of a partial bill. In particular, the actual HELP legislation is expected to contain a more robust employer mandate and some provisions related to Medicaid, among other things. But how much difference does that make? According to Ezra Klein a lot:
The bill that CBO scored did not look much like the bill they intend to write. Which means that the numbers aren’t correct. If HELP is writing a bill with a strong employer and individual mandate, and CBO scores a bill with no employer mandate and a weak individual mandate, it’s not clear where that estimate leaves us.
By Monday night, members of the HELP Committee were scrambling to give the CBO something closer to the final legislation to examine — this time including rough details of the employer mandate and the individual mandate. They’re hoping to have a new set of estimates by Friday, though that’s probably ambitious.
The bottom line is that we should expect the real bill to have a somewhat higher cost number but a much higher number of people getting health coverage. Consequently the cost per person will be much lower and the legislation will look much more reasonable. Jonathan Cohn explains some of the mechanics by which the inclusion of the employer-side provisions will dramatically alter the final impact of the bill.
But long story short, for now this looks more like a problem of legislative mechanics—they shouldn’t have had the CBO score this in such a preliminary way and get a misleading headline number out there—than one of policy gone off the rails.
8 Responses to “CBO Scores Kinda Sorta HELP Bill”
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June 16th, 2009 at 10:08 am
By Monday night, members of the HELP Committee were scrambling to give the CBO something closer to the final legislation to examine
Why not have your work done before having it scored? It’s not like Ted Kennedy’s new to this or anything..
June 16th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Agreed. I don’t know how the scoring process works, but this looks like somebody in Kennedy’s office screwed up.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Isn’t it possible they did this on purpose to try to derail health reform and serve their pharma and insurance co. masters?
June 16th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Not having read the CBO report (the link was dead when I tried it), I’m curious whether the $1 trillion cost takes into account what employers or individuals are now paying in insurance premiums. Government-provided health coverage is a category killer, private insurers would be in the position of Netscape trying to charge for an application that Microsoft provides for free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_killer
So are these employer and individual cost savings reflected in the CBO’s analysis or does it simply look at the bill’s impact on the Treasury (instead of the economy as a whole)?
June 16th, 2009 at 11:01 am
When will the Dem buffoons in Congress learn their lesson??
They got hammered by negative headlines and the GOP on the initial partial estimates on the Stim bill & cap & trade.
And now they did it again with preliminary numbers on health care.
Do they have ANY IDEA what they are doing, these Dem congressional “leaders”, for goodness sake???
June 16th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Yglesias. Yes, one trillion will insure 16 million at $6300 per year. This comes to $500/month. Ad to that the $300 per month in auto expenses to drive up to the doctor since the transportation problem remains unrepaired.
But, have no fear, because something wonderous will happen in Congress sometime in the future. I am reminded of the Republican effort to get dynamic scoring on tax cuts, remember that fiasco?
June 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
[...] bottom line is that we should expect the real bill to have a somewhat higher cost number but a much higher number of people getting health coverage,” Matt Yglesias writes. “Consequently the cost per person will be much lower and the [...]
June 20th, 2009 at 2:09 am
[...] $1 trillion price tag to the Kennedy-Dodd health care plan. Supporters of the Kennedy-Dodd approach then complained that the CBO only scored an incomplete version of the bill and Dodd-Kennedy staffers [...]