WASHINGTON — A nonpartisan government study says repealing President Barack Obama's signature health care law would modestly increase the budget deficit and the number of uninsured Americans would rise by more than 20 million.
The report from the Congressional Budget Office comes ahead of a highly anticipated Supreme Court ruling that could have a major impact on the Affordable Care Act, nullifying health insurance subsidies for some 6 million people in more than 30 states. The budget analysts said that would add a host of new uncertainties to their estimates.
Republicans now in control of both chambers of Congress say they are not backing away from their promise to repeal "Obamacare."
But repealing the law's spending cuts and tax increases would add $137 billion to the federal deficit over the coming decade, CBO said in the report issued Friday, even though almost $1.7 trillion in coverage costs would disappear. Repeal would reduce deficits in the first few years but increase them steadily as time goes on.
Repeal would up the number of uninsured people by about 24 million people, and the share of U.S. adults with health insurance would drop from roughly 90 percent now to about 82 percent, the report said.
On the other side of the balance sheet, the report says that completely repealing the law would, on average, boost the economy by 0.7 percent a year after the start of the '20s. That's mostly because more people would enter the workforce or work more hours to make up for the lack of government health care subsidies.
But the positive economic effects of repeal would fade over time, the budget agency said, offset by the increased budget deficits. Repeal of the excise tax on high-cost plans is a major reason why deficits would increase in later years, because more and more plans would be hit by this "Cadillac tax."
The CBO provides lawmakers with nonpartisan budget and economic analysis. Republicans controlling Congress have increasingly asked the office to incorporate a broader range of potential economic consequences of major legislation into its work, and Friday's report is the first major study released since GOP appointee Keith Hall took over as CBO director. CBO analysts always caution that their studies of legislation can be uncertain, especially over many years.