Letters to the Editor, The Cost of Repealing Obamacare

More Letters to the Editor; one poster wants us to rely on CBO figures to claim repealing Obamacare; Yes, besides Paul Krugman there are still folks out there who think you can expand healthcare by 30 million people and it will cost less and save money.

Today, the Republicans will start discussion of HR 2, called Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. Seriously, that's what they named it. Interestingly, Republicans and Tea Partiers have promised to not add to the deficit, yet according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimate, "HR 2 would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012-2019 periods by roughly $145 billion. As for the job-killing allegations, Republican leadership fails to mention CBO projections of small or minimal impact on jobs and fails to mention the CBO predictions of an offsetting gain of 890,000 jobs in hospitals, doctor's offices and insurance companies. Finally, Republicans seem content to repeal Obamacare, but are happy to accept government-sponsored health care for themselves and their families. Good enough for them but too good for us? It will be interesting to watch the Republicans/Tea Partiers govern and to see how closely they follow their pre-election promises.

John Beisner, Boulder Creek

My reply-John Beisner's article that the Republican health care bill HR 2 will increase the federal deficit by $145 billion is another example of Democrats using fuzzy accounting. The figure is based on the CBO's original score of Obamacare and its alternate reality deficit reduction. From Rep. Paul Ryan: "The CBO has to score what you put in front of them ... The CBO score ignores the discretionary cost of the $115 billion you need to spend to run this new Obamacare program, that double counts the Medicare savings, that double counts the CLASS Act revenue, that double counts the Social Security revenue, that does not count the Doc Fix' -- you add all that stuff up, net it out, we're talking about a $701 billion hole -- deficit." So, the only reason HR 2 will add to the deficit is because the imaginary $135 billion deficit reduction of Obamacare is being replaced with real cost estimates.

Brad Goodwin, Santa Cruz