Quote:
By Jacob Goldstein
The Congressional Budget Office just released its estimates for the Senate Finance Committee’s big health-care bill. (Here’s the WSJ story.) The bottom line: CBO estimates that the bill will shave more than $80 billion off of the federal deficit over a 10-year period.
Here are five key numbers from CBO:
94%: The percentage of legal U.S. residents under 65 who will have health insurance in 2019. That’s up from about 83% today. The bill doesn’t provide coverage for illegal immigrants. U.S. citizens 65 and older already have near universal access to health insurance, through Medicare.
29 million: The decrease over a decade in the number of people who are under 65 and uninsured.
25 million: The number of people under 65 who would still be uninsured in a decade. About a third would be illegal immigrants.
$829 billion: The gross total cost to the federal government, over 10 years, of expanding insurance coverage. This includes credits and subsidies to help people buy insurance on exchanges; higher funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); and tax credits for small employers.
$911 billion: Savings and new revenue, over 10 years, resulting from the bill. Among the contributors: A new tax on so-called Cadillac health-insurance plans (initially defined as those with annual annual premiums over $8,000 for individuals and over $21,000 for families, with some exceptions).
Bonus Number: The CBO estimates that only $3 billion of an allotted $6 billion will be spent for the non-profit insurance co-ops described in the bill. The co-ops got a lot of attention in the health-care debate this summer, but CBO says “they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.”
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http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/10/...l/?mod=blogmod
Not discussed:
How they are going to cut Medicare Advantage and how that will affect seniors that depend on it, esp in rural areas.
There are still a lot of amendments to go through.
The CBO calculations only take into account the proposed bill, not the potential for employers to take the penalty hit and pass the empolyee off to what ever plan they can find out there under the big mommy of the Fed.