Five Key Numbers In CBO’s Score of the Senate Finance Bill

Capitol The Congressional Budget Office just released its estimates for the Senate Finance Committee’s big health-care bill. (Here’s the WSJ story.) The bottom line: CBO estimates that the bill will shave more than $80 billion off of the federal deficit over a 10-year period.

Here are five key numbers from CBO:

94%: The percentage of legal U.S. residents under 65 who will have health insurance in 2019. That’s up from about 83% today. The bill doesn’t provide coverage for illegal immigrants. U.S. citizens 65 and older already have near universal access to health insurance, through Medicare.

29 million: The decrease over a decade in the number of people who are under 65 and uninsured.

25 million: The number of people under 65 who would still be uninsured in a decade. About a third would be illegal immigrants.

$829 billion: The gross total cost to the federal government, over 10 years, of expanding insurance coverage. This includes credits and subsidies to help people buy insurance on exchanges; higher funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); and tax credits for small employers.

$911 billion: Savings and new revenue, over 10 years, resulting from the bill. Among the contributors: A new tax on so-called Cadillac health-insurance plans (initially defined as those with annual annual premiums over $8,000 for individuals and over $21,000 for families, with some exceptions).

Bonus Number: The CBO estimates that only $3 billion of an allotted $6 billion will be spent for the non-profit insurance co-ops described in the bill. The co-ops got a lot of attention in the health-care debate this summer, but CBO says “they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.”

Photo: Associated Press