The CBO is upping its cost projections on Obamacare. But relax — it’s just another $115 billion or so in “discretionary” and “administrative” costs, meaning the bill now looks like it will cost $1 trillion over ten years, which is the number us paranoid wingers have been using all along (minus the front-loaded taxes, double-counting, and Medicare duplicity, anyway).
Try to remain calm and control your breathing:
The Congressional Budget Office expects the federal agencies to spend $10 billion to $20 billion over 10 years on administrative costs to implement the overhaul. The CBO expects Congress to spend an additional $105 billion over 10 years to fund discretionary programs in the overhaul.
The CBO released the estimates in response to a request from California Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Lewis said the inquiry was filed before the House voted on the bill.
“[L]arge sums of discretionary spending in both the House and Senate versions of the health care reform bills have not yet been included in estimates by the CBO, rendering it impossible to make informed decisions regarding the outcome of this legislation,” Lewis wrote in a February letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to postpone votes until the discretionary spending analysis was complete.
The CBO estimated in March that the net cost of the overhaul would be $788 billion over 10 years, but cautioned that it couldn’t make an estimate of the discretionary costs without more time and information.
Pass the bill to find out what’s in it.