Irritated by the budgetary numbers attached to Obamacare,
Republicans who control Congress recently switched directors at the
Congressional Budget Office, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan agency, and
it backfired as the CBO announced last Friday that repealing the Affordable
Care Act would increase the federal deficit by $353 billion over the coming decade.

“The analysis is the first of the health care law under
newly installed CBO Director Keith Hall, whom Republicans appointed in February
amid complaints over how his predecessor had analyzed the Affordable Care Act,”
Politico reported.

“The projected budget hit (from) a repeal is actually
bigger than what Hall’s predecessor, Doug Elmendorf, had forecast. In 2012, the
last time the agency considered the budgetary impact of repeal, Elmendorf said
rescinding the law would increase the deficit by $109 billion over a decade.”

Without Obamacare, the cost of the tax subsidies for
insurance recipients would be gone but so would the “Cadillac tax” on
gold-plated health care plans and the various cost-containment measures within
the ACA.

The new estimate, for the years 2016-25, undercuts a Republican
plan to use parliamentary procedures to repeal the law because congressional rules
bar the use of the “reconciliation” process for legislation that adds to the
deficit.
It also comes amid potential problems for Republican governors, including Gov.
Rick Snyder, as the nation awaits the Supreme Court ruling on whether to outlaw
the purchase of health insurance on the federal exchange in the 34 states that
declined to establish their own state exchange.
Jay Bookman, a columnist with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, notes that the
GOP still has not formulated a replacement for Obamacare, even if it’s only a
transitional program that gradually takes away insurance for the 19 million
people who have benefits from the ACA.

“… None of the Republican proposals to allegedly ‘replace’
Obamacare has been submitted for CBO analysis. It’s almost as if the GOP is
afraid of what an unbiased, third-party analysis would tell them, even when
that analysis is conducted by experts of its own choosing,” Bookman wrote. “…That
can lead to answers that you really, really do not want to hear.”

 

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