A new report says repealing the federal health care law will cost Michigan consumers and small businesses a lot of money.
PIRGIM, the consumer advocacy group that issued the report, says individuals could see their premiums go up by 20% by 2016 if the repeal goes through. The repeal would also increase the cost of offering employer-based health insurance over the long term by more than $3,000 a year.
Meghan Hess is with PIRGIM. She says rolling back the law "would also terminate the establishment or expansion of over 184 community health centers across the state, and these community health centers help fill gaps in access to care, giving more people the ability to seek preventive care instead of going to the emergency room."
Attorneys General in Michigan and at least twenty other states have filed a lawsuit challenging the health care law.
The U.S. House of Representatives has postponed a vote on repealing the health care law in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting.
An article in the Christian Science Monitor looks at why the Congressional Budget Office, which originally said the health care law would save $143 billion dollars over 10 years, now says repealing health care reform will cost $230 billion over 10 years. Here's an excerpt:
The health debate started in 2009, so CBO used a 10-year window that ran from 2010 to 2019. It’s now 2011, so the repeal law will be judged against a 10-year window that runs from 2012 to 2021. The $230 billion figure reflects that longer window. Through 2019, the cost would be $145 billion. The second reason is that the legislation President Obama signed last spring wasn’t the final word on health reform. In December, Congress was struggling to find a way to pay for the infamous Medicare “doc fix”, which now runs through the end of 2011. To do so, Congress decided to cut $15 billion from the subsidies created by the health legislation. Because those cuts reduced future subsidies, it is now $15 billion more expensive to repeal the overall health reform. The third reason is that the original health legislation wasn’t just about health policy. It also included fundamental reforms to the way the government subsidizes college loans. The repeal bill wouldn’t undo those changes, which resulted in budget savings of $19 billion over 2010 to 2019.
