The CBO score for the health care reconciliation bill was expected yesterday, but it was not released. The issue appears to be related to the hazards of reconciliation. To survive challenges during the reconciliation process, the items in the bill must be directly related to budgetary items and they must reduce the deficit. Right now, the Feinstein-proposed oversight committee for insurance rates is out of the bill. There also appears to be a problem with the excise tax. The changes to the tax lowered the CBO score more than expected:
On Wednesday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was called into an unplanned meeting at the White House to discuss late-stage negotiations on a proposed tax on high-end insurance plans. According to sources familiar with what transpired, congressional leaders had begun discussions earlier in the day (perhaps last night) about accelerating the tax’s impact in order to produce more savings under the president’s revised health care bill.
Under the president’s plan, those families with health care plans over $27,500 and individuals with plans over $10,200 would be taxed starting in 2018. That tax would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index plus one percent, which would provide some additional comfort to those with high-end policies — specifically for labor workers who had bargained for these plans.
The plan, however, got tripped up after congressional negotiators received poorer-than-expected feedback from the Congressional Budget Office, a senior Democratic hill aide confirmed. And as a compromise, on Wednesday, they began discussing indexing the tax simply to the Consumer Price Index.
“What the White House is putting out is not any big major changes to the deal,” said a source briefed on the matter. “What they are talking about is the way things are right now the tax was indexed to CPI+1 and they want to change it to CPI general inflation.”
The new CBO score is expected sometime today. This means the earliest the bill can be voted on is Sunday. Yesterday it looked like the bill was really gaining some momentum, we’ll have to wait and see if this derails that momentum.