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Elmendorf Says CBO Score Does Not Measure Whether Bill Will Bend Cost Curve

By Philip Klein on 10.13.09 @ 11:48AM

While President Obama has made bending the health care cost curve central to his drive to overhaul the nation's health care system, Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf testified this morning that last week's much-touted analysis by the CBO did not measure whether the Senate Finance Committee would achieve this.

Under questioning by Sen. Mike Crapo during today's Finance Committee hearing, Elmendorf said that the CBO's analysis focused only on the bill's effects on the federal budget, but not on whether it would reduce national health care expenditures overall.

This is an important distinction. It's easy to achieve deficit reduction in a bill -- at least on paper -- if you simply raise taxes by more than you increasing spending. Because the Finance Committee bill raises taxes and promises cuts to Medicare that may never materialize, the CBO estimated that it would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years. But that doesn't mean it the CBO is saying it would decrease the overall amount that the nation is spending on health care, lower the cost of insurance premiums, or reduce health care spending as a percentage of GDP.

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JP| 10.13.09 @ 12:34PM

According to the Senate Plan, taxpayers and businesses would begin paying into ObamaCare in 2010, but ObamaCare would not begin paying out until 2013. Thier 10 year outlook has 10 years of collecting revenues, but only 7 years of paying out benefits. That is why they can say, the Plan will not run a decadal defecit; however, once people begin collecting benefits, the defecits begin, and they accelerate. But, at the end of the 10 year period ObamaCare is still in the black.

This is misinformation at its worst. And what pray tell, happens between 2010 and 2013. What will happen to everyone's premiums? How many doctors and nurses will retire or call it quits. How many of the smaller insurance corporations will just get out of the health care business? Have any of these bean counters ever heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences?