CBO Estimates House Health Care Bill

July 18 - Yesterday, the CBO released preliminary cost estimates for the House Tri-Committee health care reform bill. According to the CBO, the bill would increase ten year deficits by $239 billion -- including by $65 billion in the tenth year alone.

Included in the bill is a $228 billion fix ($245 including interactions) to Medicare physicians payments, which would otherwise face steep cuts. Outside of this fix, and a few other spending measures (for example, a temporary reinsurance program for seniors) the bill includes roughly $583 billion in revenue raises (almost entirely from a surtax on very high earners) and almost $500 in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Coverage Provisions $1042 Spending Changes -$219 Revenue Changes $583 Deficit Impact $239

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Student Loans Cost $340 Billion More than Expected

Based in part on new data from the Congressional Budget Office, this piece shows: The estimated federal cost of student loans issued between 2015 and 2024 has increased by $340 billion – from a projected gain of $135 billion in the 2014 baseline to an expected loss of $205 billion in the 2024 baseline. Much of the cost increase can be explained by the expansion and increased enrollment in income-driven repayment (IDR). In forward projections, graduate school loans are now nearly as subsidized as undergraduate loans and make up half of the cost of newly issued student loans. Reforming graduate loans to be cost-neutral would generate over $100 billion in deficit reduction over the next decade.

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