Breaking Down the Senate Health Plan Numbers

from The Washington Independent by Mike Lillis

Now that the veil has been lifted, here are a few of the important numbers surrounding the Senate's health reform bill, courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office.

• $848 billion: Ten-year cost of the proposal, all of it offset by revenue increases and budget cuts elsewhere.
• $130 billion: Amount the bill would reduce budget deficits over 10 years.
• 31 million: Number of currently uninsured people who would gain coverage.
• 24 million: Number of people who would still be uninsured in 2019.
• 33: Estimated percentage of those 24 million who would be undocumented residents.
• 30 million: Number of people enrolling in exchange plans.
• 5 million: Number of those 30 million who opt into the exchange rather than accepting employer-sponsored coverage. (They're not eligible for subsidies.)
• $447 billion: Ten-year cost to subsidize exchange plans.
• 3 to 4 million: Number of people estimated to enroll in the public plan.
• $750: Per-worker penalty for employers not offering health coverage, when employees move to subsidized exchange plans.
• $95: Penalty for individuals not complying with the insurance mandate in 2014.
• $750: Penalty for individual non-compliance in 2016.
• $36 billion: Amount the government expects to collect in penalties from employers and uninsured individuals over 10 years.
• 15 million: Ten-year enrollment increase in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
• $374 billion: Ten-year cost to expand Medicaid and CHIP.
• $25 billion: Ten-year cost to states to comply with the Medicaid and CHIP provisions.
• $8,500/$23,000: The thresholds — for individuals and families, respectively — at which insurance plans will be considered high-cost "Cadillacs," and therefore subject to a 40 percent tax. (To mollify labor unions, these thresholds were bumped up from the $8,000/$21,000 triggers found in the Senate Finance Committee's bill.) For folks with dangerous jobs — firefighters, miners, policemen, etc. — the thresholds are even higher.
• $149 billion: Revenue generated by taxing Cadillac plans.
• $192 billion: Savings derived by reducing projected increases in Medicare's fee-for-service payments.
• $118 billion: Cuts to Medicare Advantage program, under which the government pays private insurance companies to cover Medicare patients.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last night that the Democrats will file for cloture today on a motion to proceed to the bill, with the cloture vote likely to come Saturday morning. The actual floor debate, however, will probably not begin until after the Thanksgiving recess, Schumer added.