New CBO health law estimate shows much higher spending past first 10 years

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

The Congressional Budget Office has extended its cost estimates for President Obama's health care law out to 2022, taking in more years of full implementation, and showing that the bill is substantially more expensive -- twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag.

In a largely overlooked segment of the CBO's update to the budget outlook released Tuesday, the independent arm of Congress found that the bill will cost $1.76 trillion between now and 2022.

That only counts the cost of coverage, not implementation costs and other changes.

"The bill spends more than the president promised, it covers fewer people -- probably 2 million fewer people -- and it taxes more than was expected," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee.

The first estimates of the cost of the health care bill included three years before the bill even took effect, so there was little or no spending, making the full 10 years look less expensive. Sessions notes that the $1.76 trillion estimate includes only the costs of coverage, not implementation and other costs. He argues that all those drive the price up even further over the first full 10 years of the law.

"The full accounting of the bill is $2.6 trillion. That's a fair and accurate analysis of what the bill would cost, according to CBO," Sessions said, noting how the cost dwarfs the fight over the 10-year debt reduction plan debated last year.

"We spent a whole summer fighting over a way to reduce spending by $2.1 trillion and here this bill is going add $2.6 trillion more in spending."

Budget watchdogs note that before the bill passed into law, Republicans warned the price tag was bound to go up -- since the expenditures and receipts covered different time periods.

"Spending doesn't begin until 2014, and so you got to count a couple of years where nothing was going on," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, director of Committee for a Responsible Budget. "If you have a big spending program and you count 10 years of it instead of eight years, you get a much bigger number, which is what we've done. ...

"Now those years are steadily going into the rearview mirror and what we're instead (at) are years where it's fully implemented," Holtz-Eakin continued. "The Affordable Care Act is going to cost a lot of money."

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Surprise, surprise...

[clearvision]

What's a $T between friends?

[Argyle58]

The CBO is supposed to be a "non-partisan" entity, but its director is appointed by the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Temp of the Senate. In 2009 that would mean that Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd got to select Douglas Elmendorf as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office.

 

Anyone believe this "non-partisan" crap?

[clearvision]

They also have to only calculate their figures based on the exact numbers and features Congress provides them, no matter how far from reality.