The Congressional Budget Office has put a $1.04 trillion pricetag on a House plan to overhaul health care that it says will provide insurance by 2019 for 37 million peole who currently have no coverage.
Democrats introduced an incomplete version of the the House bill, which calls for creating a robust government-run insurance option and would require employers to either provide insurance or pay a new tax. The bill is supposed to be finalized in three committees in the coming weeks.
The CBO estimate confirms some of the fears of critics of the bill who say a public option would have a massive advantage over the private insurance industry and would thus threaten its existence.
According to the report, premiums for the public option would be about 10 percent cheaper than private insurance. And since doctors would be paid close to the rate now offered under Medicare, some would not participate in the public option, according to the CBO report.
“Even so, CBO‚Äôs judgment is that a substantial number of providers would elect to participate in the public plan,in part because they would expect a plan run by Health and Human Services to attract substantial enrollment,” the report states.
The CBO estimates that up to 10 million people would eventually be enrolled in the public option, once it is fully implemented.
By 2019, according to the CBO report, about 17 million people who are not eligible for Medicare would remain uninsured, half of whom would be unauthorized immigrants.
