In Battle Over Health Law, Math Cuts Both Ways

[alp227]

WASHINGTON — With the health care fight roaring back to life on Capitol Hill, questions that seemed settled last March, when President Obama signed his top domestic priority into law, are once again front and center.

So, will the health care law cost money or save money? Will it create jobs or eliminate jobs? Will it improve outcomes for patients or make medical care more difficult to get?

And, for the love of gravity and basic mathematics, how can the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper charged with keeping count of the nation’s fiscal condition, say that it would cost the government $230 billion over 10 years to repeal a law that would spend $930 billion to extend health insurance to 32 million people?

“I don’t think anybody in this town believes that repealing Obamacare is going to increase the deficit,” the House speaker, John A. Boehner, declared at a news conference on Thursday, dismissing a report by the budget experts concluding that a repeal would add $230 billion to federal deficits from 2012 to 2021.

But that is exactly what the budget office says, based on a complex thicket of calculations aimed at ascertaining the effect on the government’s bottom line of the law’s myriad tax increases, cuts in projected Medicare spending and costs of new benefits, including subsidies to help people buy insurance.

House Republicans on Friday pushed ahead with a measure to repeal the law. The House, by a vote of 236 to 181, approved the terms of debate for the repeal proposal, setting up a fierce floor fight next week — the first major clash of the 112th Congress. The vote showed Republicans easily have the muscle to approve the repeal in a vote scheduled for Wednesday, but the bill is likely to go no further given the staunch opposition in the Democrat-led Senate.

Much of the health care debate will center on cost — to the government and to employers. On Thursday, Republicans issued their own report, called “Obamacare: A Budget-Busting Job-Killing Law,” which concluded, “The health care law will cost the nation $2.6 trillion when fully implemented, and add $701 billion to the deficit in the first 10 years.”

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/health/policy/08cong.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[ProSense]

1. Ah, the MSM. I read that earlier. I also read

Krugman's two posts smacking down the GOP claims:

Health Care: Feel the Fraudulence

Health Reform and Social Security