Reactions to CBO report on Senate health bill are mixed

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Dec 2 2009

News organizations continue to report on reactions to the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the Senate health bill.

The Hill reports that "Senate centrists concerned that healthcare reform would do too little to lower insurance costs said Tuesday their worries have eased." Although centrists such as Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, "emphasized the measure before them needed refining to fully answer the question of affordability, praise from some of the few lawmakers still up for grabs bodes well for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)." The report, however, "has sparked a partisan spin war, with Republicans blasting Reid's bill for hiking premiums for some and Democrats pointing to the bill's benefits to most people. The report provided Reid and his Democratic allies with a mixed bag" (Young, 12/1).

The Financial Times: "The much-awaited analysis, published the same day that the Senate began debating a controversial bill that provides for a government-run health insurance system, is likely to disappoint those who back reform as a way to lower healthcare costs. The non-partisan CBO said that people with health insurance provided by their employers -- five out of six Americans -- would hardly see any change in their premiums by 2016" (Fifield, 12/1).

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.