CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf has stated on several occasions that an accurate CBO scores requires legislative language.  But CBO didn’t have it to do an accurate score on the Baucus draft.  So how reliable is this cost estimate?  And how much of a burden will it be on the economy?

According to this new CBO score, the Baucus concept draft contains $506 billion in new taxes and over a half-trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid while moving millions more to the Medicaid rolls.  The CBO score also claims that the draft is budget-neutral. Right.

Should this concept draft pass out of committee, it still has to be merged with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee partial bill passed earlier this year which contains a robust government-run health care option and, like the Senate Finance concept, does not bar federal funding of abortion nor does it require proof of citizenship when enrolling for government-run health care coverage.

The legislative language will be written when these two bills merge.  All sorts of things will be inserted that are not part of the CBO cost estimate score.  Democrat Senate leadership says Republicans will be shut out of this bill-writing process.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Finance, says hard working American families will foot the bill to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
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“I worry that some of my colleagues will focus only on the deficit-neutral piece of CBO’s document,” Grassley said.  “A celebration of the deficit effects masks who pays the bills.  This package includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and fees.  Most Americans with health insurance will see their premiums increase.”  

He added, “Uninsured individuals would pay a tax for not obtaining government-approved health insurance.  Employers who already offer health insurance would face a penalty if their workers choose subsidy-eligible insurance.  With all of this, the bill spends nearly a $1 trillion and still leaves 25 million people without health insurance.  That's not much bang for the buck”

Absolute, outright, theft by the Fed.

Human Events