How much would health reform really cost?
Preliminary estimates have placed the cost in the $1 trillion range. But that’s based on estimates of discrete portions of proposals. The real estimated cost of reform will depend on how all portions of the final plan are expected to interact with each other. But it’s a cost that Obama has insisted lawmakers pay for so that health reform will be deficit neutral. So if a bill is estimated to cost $1 trillion, lawmakers will have to come up with $1 trillion to pay for it through spending cuts and tax increases. No borrowing allowed. But making a bill deficit neutral on paper is different from making it deficit neutral in practice. A number of health reform measures have never been tried before. So whether they work and how quickly they work will affect the ultimate price tag. So, too, will lawmakers over the next several years if they opt to tweak the health reform policies they put in place today.
