Far more expensive, and damaging, to the nation than Obamacare.
On the day that House Republicans hold their
50th Obamacare repeal vote, they get some inconvenient news from the Congressional Budget Office: an
update of costs and savings for the law. Bottom line, costs are lower than the CBO originally estimated.
In 2010, the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation projected that the heal tin insurance coverage provisions of Obamacare would cost the federal government $759 billion during fiscal years 2014 through 2019. Now:
"The newest projections indicate that those provisions will cost $701 billion over that same period. Intervening projections (March 2012 is shown in the figure) of the cost of the ACA’s coverage provisions for those years have all been close to those figures on a year-by-year basis. […]
In all, the revisions incorporated in the current baseline decrease by $9 billion the projected cost of the ACA’s insurance coverage provisions over the 2014–2023 period (the period covered by the previous baseline), from $1,363 billion to $1,354 billion (see the table at the bottom of this post). Nearly all of the change is for the 2014–2017 period.
The law isn't bankrupting the nation. In fact, it's reducing the deficit. What's more, it's actually
boosting incomes and spending, thereby helping the economy.
On the other hand, House Republicans have cost the nation's taxpayers roughly $72.5 million on holding 50 repeal votes (based on calculations by CBS News back at repeal vote number 33), not to mention the opportunity cost of the House not doing anything at all productive.