Repealing Obamacare Would Grow Economy, Reduce Uninsured by 10 Million

NCPA ^ | July 16, 2015 | By John R. Graham

[Brad from Tennessee]

I have asked, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has answered.

I have been urging CBO to do a comprehensive estimate of all the effects of the Affordable Care Act, effectively for the first time since 2012. It did so in June. The main takeaway from CBO is “repealing the ACA would increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by about 0.7 percent in the 2021–2025 period, mostly because provisions of the law that are expected to reduce the supply of labor would be repealed.”

Changing Estimates

CBO concludes repeal would increase federal budget deficits. This effect is much smaller than previous estimates, because this is the first time CBO has used so-called “dynamic scoring,” taking macroeconomic effects of repeal into account, instead of just a simple static bookkeeping type of estimate.

If we exclude the effects of macroeconomic feedback—as has been done for previous estimates related to ACA—and most other CBO cost estimates, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate federal deficits would increase by $353 billion over the 2016–25 period if ACA is repealed.

Repeal of ACA would raise economic output mainly by boosting the supply of labor, and the resulting increase in GDP is projected to average about 0.7 percent 2021 to 2025. Those effects alone would reduce federal deficits by $216 billion over the 2016–25 period, CBO and JCT estimate, mostly because of increased federal revenues.

Repeal Would Shrink Deficits

Charles Blahousof the Mercatus Center says CBO’s conclusion is incorrect, because what it is using as “current law” to measure the effects of repeal is not actually the current law. Blahousof says federal budget deficits will actually shrink. . .

[Brad from Tennessee]

John R. Graham (john.graham@ncpa.org) is a senior fellow at The National Center for Policy Analysis and The Independent Institute.

[umgud]

We need to bring 30+ million illegals out into the open............... then make sure they don’t get another public benefit of any kind. Then maybe we can talk about the state of healthcare in the US.

[hosepipe]

30+ million illegal voters can SWAY a presidential election... tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick.. tick..

[GregoTX]

This guy was not a “gunmen”, he was a terrorist. The gunmen were the officers that showed up and stopped him.

[zeestephen]

Republicans have SO missed the boat on health care.

In 2008-2009, I wrote many comments at Free Republic pointing out that the GOP could provide health care to ALL uninsured Americans if we increased Medicaid spending by $200 billion a year.

Yes, I know, all that money would have had to come from deficit spending, a very dangerous option.

But, the other option was worse - ObamaCare.

So, six years later, what's happened?

We are spending at least $200 billion a year more on health care - PLUS - we have ObamaCare, too!

The Republicans are the most politically ignorant party in the history of democracy.

[WashingtonSource]

Bump

[windsorknot]

The facts don’t matter to the zealots of the Religion of Statism and Central Planning. Nationalized Healthcare has been part of their mission statement from the beginning. Once the Unaffordable Care Act was passed, there was minimal chance of its outright repeal.

[TBP]

That’s why “progressives” oppose it.