It may be Republicans’ first order of business in 2017, but repealing the Affordable Care Act will boost the country’s budget deficit by $350 billion over 10 years.
That’s according to a new study from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). The Hill reports in its analysis the CRFB found that although repealing the law’s spending on providing coverage would save $1.55 trillion, the savings would be more than negated by repealing $800 billion in tax increases and $1.1 trillion in Medicare and other cuts.
In addition, the analysis found that repeal of the ACA would increase the number of uninsured people by 23 million.
Calculated another way, known as “dynamic scoring,” the group says, the cost of repeal would be come in at a lower figure: $150 billion over 10 years. Dynamic scoring is a method of analysis that takes into account the economic effects of repeal. Estimates can differ on the cost of the repeal bill, since Republicans cannot repeal all provisions in the law under the fast-track rules they are using to pass the repeal.
The report says repealing the “Cadillac Tax” on high-cost insurance plans “costs $100 billion over a decade; those costs are slated to grow substantially over time, and repealing the Cadillac Tax without a replacement would also remove a key tool in helping to slow overall health care cost growth.”
Republicans have considered retaining some of the ACA’s taxes to get funding for the act’s replacement, but it’s by no means decided that they’ll do that.
“Any changes to the ACA should be designed to reduce, not increase, the unsustainable growth in the federal debt,” the group writes, saying Republicans should be working on cutting the country’s debt, not increasing it.
In addition, it pointed out they’ll still have to find savings so they can pay for whatever will replace the ACA.
“Savings from repealing parts of the ACA must be large enough to not only finance repeal of any of ACA’s offsets, but also to pay for whatever ‘replace’ legislation is put forward,” they say in the study, adding, “This is not an easy task, and it will likely require policymakers to retain or replace the majority of ACA’s health and revenue offsets.”
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