The Congressional Budget Office has scored HR 3962, the House health care bill introduced today.  (The full report is attached below.)

  The conclusion:  Expanding health coverage and the bill's other provisions will cost $894 billion* over ten years, but would be paid for with $426 billion in spending cuts -- mostly in Medicare -- and $572 billion in tax increases, for a net $104 billion deficit reduction.

   (*CBO says expanding coverage would actually cost about $1.055 trillion, but penalties for those who don't have insurance -- and companies that don't provide it -- will bring in about $167 billion over ten years, leaving a net cost of $888 billion.  Then it adds back in $6 billion from other provisions, leaving the net cost near $894 billion.)

  Critics say the bill cuts the deficit only because the tax increases and Medicare cuts begin almost immediately, while the expanded health coverage is delayed.

   In 2012, for example, the insurance coverage expansion would cost $2 billion net, CBO says, while the tax increases and spending cuts would bring in $51 billion.

  The net deficit reduction in 2012 is therefore $49 billion -- nearly half of the total $104 billion over ten years.

  The bill also assumes a reduction in Medicare payments to doctors, although a separate bill introduced Thursday would restore those cuts.  That restoration is not scored by CBO.

   The bill would leave about 18 million non-elderly people, including about six million "unauthorized immigrants," uncovered, CBO says.   Total coverage would grow to 96 percent of those eligible.

   

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