Report shows effect of health law repeal

Study: GOP goal would increase deficit, uninsured.

The nonpartisan study shows a repeal would modestly increase the budget deficit,

— Repealing WASHINGTON President Barack O bama’s signature health care law would modestly increase the budget dehicit, while the number of uninsured Americans would rise by more than 20 million, said a nonpartisan government study released Friday.

The report from the Congressional Budget O fhice comes ahead of a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling that could have a major impact on the Affordable Care Act if it nullihies health insurance subsidies for some 6 million people in more than 30 states. The budget analysts said that would add new uncertainties to their estimates.

Republicans now in control of both chambers of Congress say they are not backing away from their promise to repeal the health care law.

But repealing the law’s spending cuts and tax increases would add $137 billion to the federal dehicit over the coming decade, CBO said, even though almost $1.7 trillion in coverage costs would disappear. Repeal would reduce dehicits in the hirst few years but increase them steadily as time goes on.

Repeal would up the number of uninsured people by about 24 million people, and the share of U.S. adults with health insurance would drop from roughly 90 percent now to about 82 percent, the report said.

O n the other side of the balance sheet, the report says that repealing the law would, on average, boost the economy by 0.7 percent a year after the start of the ’20s. That’s mostly because more people would enter the workforce or work more hours to make up for the lack of government health care subsidies.

But the positive economic effects of repeal would fade over time, the budget agency said, offset by the increased budget dehicits. Repeal of the excise tax on high-cost plans is a major reason why dehicits would increase in later years, because more and more plans would be hit by this “Cadillac tax.”

The CBO provides lawmakers with nonpartisan economic analysis. Republicans controlling Congress have increasingly asked the of hice to incorporate a broader range of potential economic consequences of major legislation into its work, and Friday’s report is the hirst major study released since GO P appointee Keith Hall took over as CBO director.

Previously, CBO analyses would not have taken into account such a broad range of economic consequences. The agency said that using its earlier approach would have resulted in a bigger estimated impact on the dehicit, an increase of $353 billion over the coming decade. Adding the economic factors cuts the repeal’s effect on the dehicit by more than half over 10 years, the report says.

“Implementing a repeal of the ACA would present major challenges,” the report said. “In the five years since its enactment, nearly every key provision of the law has taken effect and has been incorporated into final rules and other administrative actions. Undoing the ACA would thus be quite complicated.”