CBO: $1 Trillion Worth of Healthcare Only Buys So Much

The current healthcare budget debate includes such ridiculous numbers that it’s easy to forget that even staggering sums like $1 trillion are not the blanket they are cut out to be.  The Congressional Budget Office issued a preliminary analysis of the “Affordable Health Choices Act” being promulgated by Sen. Edward Kenndy and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Among its many platinum provisions are the inclusion of an insurance exchange as well as requiring mandates for all to carry insurance.

One of the curious statements about the proposal’s benefits is that the public would have a choice to keep the insurance they have not or select a more affordable option. As the CBO report points out, however, from 2010 to 2019, while some 39 million Amerticans would gain coverage through the exchanges, another 15 million would lose employer sponsored coverage, and coverage from other sources would fall by another 8 million. The net decrease in the number of uninsured would be about 16 or 17 million, the CBO estimates.

A Kennedy spokesman quickly pointed out that the analysis and the bill itself are still a work in progress. Republicans including Sen, Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) were quick to use the bill to support their contention that the “bill costs too much, covers too few, and causes many Americans to lose the coverage they have now.”

San Francisco Chronicle blogger Carolyn Lochhead makes a credible observation that this spat is starting to look more like the Hillarycare debate than the White House would like to admit.