Two former top Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget officials today said House Democrats aren’t offering the full picture on the health care bill.
On a conference call with reporters, former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin accused Democrats of using “gimmicks” to keep their bill under $900 billion and said it “does not bend the cost curve.”
Holtz-Eakin, who served as an adviser to the McCain campaign last year, said the House Democrats’ bill adds to much to the debt and assumes unrealistic savings by frontloading taxes and backloading spending.
“The American people are entitled to know,” he said.
James Capretta, former Associate OMB Director for health policy who writes for the National Review, said he considers the bill to cost $1.5 trillion when you roll in the doctor’s fix measure that didn’t pass the Senate, Medicare expansion costs, the Medicare prescription part D donut hole and small employer tax credits.
“When you rack it all up you’re really at a $1.5 trillion program, which is really quite expensive,” Capretta said.
Reporters on the call asked Holtz-Eakin about this Washington Post story suggesting he is on the market for private insurance since his COBRA has run out. And he has a preexisting condition to boot.
He said he’d have to “wait and see” what the final health care plan ends up looking like.
The call came shortly before CBO released a new analysis on the insurance exchanges created by the House bill.
