Republican Health Care Amendment Doesn't Reduce Uninsured

The Republican amendment to the Democratic House bill is a joke that keeps providing laughs. The Affordable Health Care for America Act was nothing more then a legislative attack on the Democrats. The Congressional Budget Office informed Minority Leader John Boehner that the amendment would only insure 3 million Americans and lower the deficit by $68 billion. THe CBO is projecting these estimates for 2010 to 2019. There numbered of insured and fiscal reduction is than CBO estimates for Democratic heath care bills. The CBO states the the Repuublican amedment keep the level of uninsured relatively the same.

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health
insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about
52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents
with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the
current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance
coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019
period.

The amendment's funding structure makes me wonder if there will be enough revenue to fund federal funding for high risk insurance pools. Costs would be $49 billion and additional tax revenue would be $27 billion. The CBO report does not say what these state high risk pools would cost. Not that it matters. Republicans never wrote this amendment with the intention of it becoming law. Boehner and company should not have bothered.