GOP struggles with $353 billion added deficit if Obamacare repealed

Irritated by the budgetary numbers attached to Obamacare, Republicans who control Congress recently switched directors at the Congressional Budget Office, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan agency, and it backfired as the CBO announced last Friday that repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the federal deficit by $353 billion over the coming decade.

“The analysis is the first of the health care law under newly installed CBO Director Keith Hall, whom Republicans appointed in February amid complaints over how his predecessor had analyzed the Affordable Care Act,” Politico reported.

“The projected budget hit (from) a repeal is actually bigger than what Hall’s predecessor, Doug Elmendorf, had forecast. In 2012, the last time the agency considered the budgetary impact of repeal, Elmendorf said rescinding the law would increase the deficit by $109 billion over a decade.”
Without Obamacare, the cost of the tax subsidies for insurance recipients would be gone but so would the “Cadillac tax” on gold-plated health care plans and the various cost-containment measures within the ACA.

The new estimate, for the years 2016-25, undercuts a Republican plan to use parliamentary procedures to repeal the law because congressional rules bar the use of the “reconciliation” process for legislation that adds to the deficit.
It also comes amid potential problems for Republican governors, including Gov. Rick Snyder, as the nation awaits the Supreme Court ruling on whether to outlaw the purchase of health insurance on the federal exchange in the 34 states that declined to establish their own state exchange.

Jay Bookman, a columnist with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, notes that the GOP still has not formulated a replacement for Obamacare, even if it’s only a transitional program that gradually takes away insurance for the 19 million people who have benefits from the ACA.

“… None of the Republican proposals to allegedly ‘replace’ Obamacare has been submitted for CBO analysis. It’s almost as if the GOP is afraid of what an unbiased, third-party analysis would tell them, even when that analysis is conducted by experts of its own choosing,” Bookman wrote. “…That can lead to answers that you really, really do not want to hear.”