Earlier today the Congressional Budget Office released an updated analysis of the Senate health bill. The update reflects all the amendments that were adopted during Senate consideration of the bill, some technical adjustments, and the assumption that the bill would be enacted in the spring of 2010 (rather than December 2009, as previously assumed).
The bottom [...]
Posts Tagged ‘CBO’
How Much Does the Senate Health Bill Cost?
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health on March 11, 2010 | 11 Comments »
A New Price Tag for Stimulus: $862 billion, not $787 billion
Posted in Budget, Macroeconomics, tagged Budget, CBO, Deficit, Stimulus on January 27, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Amongst its usual cracker jack budget projections yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office provided a few toy surprises for budget watchers. One is an updated estimate of the direct budget costs of the 2009 stimulus bill, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
CBO originally estimated that ARRA would cost $787 billion from 2009 [...]
Deficits As Far as the Eye Can See
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, Debt, Deficit on January 26, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Today the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated projections for the budget. As usual, the headline figure is CBO’s estimate of the budget deficit, now projected to be $1.35 trillion for the fiscal year, about 9.2% of GDP.
That’s slightly better than last year–when $1.4 trillion deficits amounted to 9.9% of GDP–but is still the second-worst [...]
The Budget Deficit Keeps Rising
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, FDIC, GSE, TARP on January 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The federal government racked up a $389 billion deficit during the first three months of the fiscal year (October through December), according to estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office yesterday. That’s $56 billion more than during the first quarter of last year, almost a 17% increase. (A portion of that increase is due to [...]
The Coming Budget Battle over TARP and Jobs
Posted in Budget, Politics, tagged Budget, CBO, jobs, TARP on January 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The House and Senate appear to be on a collision course about how to pay for a new jobs bill (aka a stimulus bill). The issue? Whether Congress can pay for new jobs programs by cutting back on TARP.
The House embraced that approach in the bill it passed before Christmas. That bill–H.R. 2847, the Jobs [...]
Don’t Double Count the Medicare Savings in Health Reform
Posted in Budget, Health, Politics, tagged Budget, CBO, Health, Politics on December 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
In order to pay for coverage expansions (and other spending increases), the Senate health bill includes a mix of tax increases and spending reductions. Notable among these are several provisions that would reduce future Medicare spending and increase Medicare revenues.
Some opponents of the bill have argued that the spending reductions would eventually drive providers from [...]
Bending the Federal Health Cost Curve (Maybe)
Posted in Budget, Health, Politics, tagged Budget, CBO, Health, Politics on December 19, 2009 | 4 Comments »
UPDATE: The Congressional Budget Office discovered an error in its original cost estimate for the revised Senate health bill. CBO originally projected that the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) created by the bill would lead to substantial reductions in Medicare spending beyond 2019. CBO’s revised estimate shows significantly smaller IPAB savings in future decades. CBO’s new [...]
When Do Regulations Turn Private Insurance into Government Insurance?
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health on December 13, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Summary: A new Senate health proposal might turn private insurance into government insurance, at least from CBO’s perspective.
In the 1990s, the Congressional Budget Office dealt a key blow to President Clinton’s health legislation when it decided that the reforms would move large portions of the health care system into the government and thus onto the [...]
How Would Health Reform Affect Insurance Premiums?
Posted in Health, Politics, tagged CBO, Health, Politics on December 1, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released its much-anticipated analysis of how the Senate health bill might affect insurance premiums. As a political matter, the analysis appears to be a clear win for proponents of the bill. Most importantly, CBO found that average premiums in the large group market—which provides about 70% of private health insurance—would [...]
For Health Bills, A Year Makes a Big Difference
Posted in Budget, Health, tagged Budget, CBO, Health on November 20, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The coverage provisions in the Senate health bill have a much lower ten-year cost that do the coverage provisions in the House bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the coverage provisions in the Senate bill will cost $848 billion from 2010 through 2019, while the corresponding costs for the House bill are $1.052 [...]

