The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office today sent its preliminary estimate of the cost of repealing the federal health reform law to new House Speaker John Boehner.
The U.S. House is scheduled to vote on the proposed repeal next week armed with information that if the bill becomes law it would add about $145 billion to the federal deficit between 2012 and 2019 or up to $230 billion if the projection is extended from 2012 to 2021.
“CBO and JCT (the Joint Tax Committee) estimated that the March 2010 health care legislation would reduce budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period and in subsequent years; consequently, we expect that repealing that legislation would increase the budget deficit,” CBO director Doug Elmendorf wrote in the letter to the speaker.
Democrats in Congress were already claiming that repealing the Affordable Care Act would add to the deficit, reduction of which is claimed as a top priority by the new Republican majority in the House. Democrats still control the U.S. Senate and have vowed to spike the repeal law, should the House approve it next Wednesday as expected.
The health reform law passed last year without a single Republican vote and Republicans, then and now, have said they don’t believe it would actually reduce the deficit, despite CBO conclusions to the contrary.
New rules in the U.S. House ushered in by the Republicans would prohibit passage of any bill that CBO reports would add to the deficit, but GOP members are allowing an exception to the rules for their repealer legislation, which is known as The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act or H.R. 2.
Also according to CBO estimates, if the repeal is passed, fewer Americans would have health insurance.