(Due to the length of this article, we were required to break it up into multiple parts because of technical difficulties. It appears in the printed version as one story)
By Charles McClure
news@ltview.com
What the CBO says
Smith is correct concerning the CBO’s assessment of H.R. 3200’s potential impact on the national deficit; however, the observations only concern some aspects of the bill, but do not include a comprehensive analysis.

According to CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, who was appointed last January to the non-partisan oversight committee, H.R. 3200 is all but certain to cause the deficit to swell, despite claims by the Obama Administration to the contrary.
“The CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation worked together to produce a preliminary analysis of the major provisions related to health insurance coverage that are contained in draft legislation called the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act,” Elmendorf said. “Among other things, those provisions would establish a mandate for most legal residents to obtain insurance, significantly expand eligibility for Medicaid, and set up insurance “exchanges” through which certain individuals and families could receive federal subsidies to substantially reduce the cost of purchasing that coverage. The analysis issued today does not take into account other parts of the proposal that would raise taxes or reduce other spending — particularly in Medicare — in an effort to offset the federal costs of the coverage provisions.
According to the CBO, enacting H.R. 3200 would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-19 period.
“That estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill’s insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that JCT estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years,” Elmendorf said. “By 2019, CBO and the JCT staff estimate, the number of non-elderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 37 million, leaving about 17 million non-elderly residents uninsured — nearly half of whom would be unauthorized immigrants.”
He noted the figures released do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation.
In addition to the expansion of Medicare, by the end of the 10 year period, in 2019, the coverage provisions would add $202 billion to the federal deficit, CBO and JCT estimated.
“That increase would be partially offset by net cost savings of $50 billion and additional revenues of $86 billion, resulting in a net increase in the deficit of an estimated $65 billion,” Elmendorf said.
Elmendorf noted the figures released thus far do not represent “a complete cost estimate for the legislation.”
“In particular, the estimated impact of the provisions related to health insurance coverage is based on specifications provided by the committee staff, rather than on a detailed analysis of the legislative language,” Elmendorf said. He said the estimates for other spending provisions reflect the specific legislative language.
“In addition, the figures do not include certain costs that the government would incur to administer the proposed changes and the impact of the bill’s provisions on other federal programs, and they do not reflect any modifications or amendments made after the bill was introduced. Nevertheless, this analysis reflects the major net budgetary effects of H.R. 3200,” Elmendorf said.
Elmendorf is the eighth Director of CBO. Before he came to CBO, he was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. As the Edward M. Bernstein Scholar, he served as coeditor of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and the director of the Hamilton Project, an initiative to promote broadly shared economic growth. He previously served as an assistant professor at Harvard University, a principal analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, and an assistant director of the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board. In those positions, he worked on budget policy, Social Security, Medicare, national health care reform, financial markets, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, and other topics. He earned his Ph.D. and A.M. in economics from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow, and his A.B. summa cum laude from Princeton University, according to his official biography.