According to the Washington Post the Congressional Budget Office has given its blessing to the health care bill under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee. It won't raise the deficit, says the CBO.
The $829 billion cost would be more than offset by reducing spending on Medicare and other federal health programs by about $400 billion over the next decade, and by imposing a series of fees on insurance companies, drugmakers, medical device manufacturers and other sectors of the health industry that stand to gain millions of new customers under the legislation.
Mitch McConnell has it right.
"The real bill will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar experiment," McConnell said in a statement, "that slashes a half-trillion dollars from seniors' Medicare, raises taxes on American families by $400 billion, increases health care premiums, and vastly expands the role of the federal government in the personal health-care decisions of every American."
There's a certain beauty to the CBO's pronouncement. When the deficit goes up something else will be to blame. I'm betting it will be George Bush and the war in Iraq.
Update: Cato estimates the cost of the bill, not at $829 billion, but at over $2 trillion.
I hope this bill does some good.
Posted by: Lisa | October 08, 2009 at 08:21 PM