Debunking Health Care Reform Myths - 7

MYTH 7: Health care reform would add $1 trillion-plus to deficit

CLAIM: Health care reform "would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years."

• AP: "But even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that none of the health plans pending on Capitol Hill would control long-term spending, and that ones with the elements Obama wants would add around $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years." [Associated Press, 8/3/09]

• Karl Rove claimed that House Democrats are "planning on a 1 trillion, 420 billion -- 420 million dollar price tag of additional spending over the next 10 years, and what they've done is, today, supposedly -- we haven't seen the details -- but they've trimmed that by 10 percent. So we're only going to beggar ourselves by $900 billion over the next decade and that's assuming they get all of the tax increases and all of the Medicare cuts that are built into this." [Hannity, 7/29/09]
  
  

REALITY: CBO found that House bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years -- not $1 trillion. In a July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced, the CBO explained that its "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." CBO thus concluded the legislation "would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period." The CBO has not released full cost estimates of the health care reform proposals being considered by the Senate.

source: MediaMatters.org










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