CBO Scores Boehner Amendment to HR3962

by Bruce Webb

Last evening the CBO Director Blog announced the release of a score of the Boehner amendment: A Preliminary Analysis of a Substitute Amendment to H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The results are not impressive: (as always click to enlarge)


The amendment is scored at reducing the deficit by $68 billion over ten years. I can’t get the breakdown to add up (see page 4) but most of the savings is in the form of malpractice reform at $54 billion with further savings from some administrative changes relating to electronic transfers and adoption of the Eschoo Biologics Amendment all of which offsets a whopping $8 billion net actually spent to expand coverage. So what do we get from spending an average of just around $800 million a year? Essentially nothing, CBO projects that the percentage of the legal non-elderly population without health insurance will stay right at 83%.

I suggest the words ‘Epic fail’ apply here. Heckuva job Johnnie!
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Update: Lifted from comments on last post. The GOP’s Health Care Plan
By: Dirk van Dijk, CFA Dirk provides a nice analysis of the other provisions of the bill beyond the cost and coverage numbers.