As lawmakers ponder the fate of the Senate Finance Committee health bill, the House Ways and Means Committee is preparing a major new health bill of its own.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said his committee will resume considering the America’s Healthy Future Act bill draft Tuesday.
The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation have predicted that implementing the current draft as written could save $81 billion over 10 years, and more in later years, but CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf warned that achieving those results would depend on sticking with Medicare provider rate control provisions that Congress has had a hard time enforcing.
CBO and JCT budget impact analyses are critical, because some Democratic lawmakers say they will refuse to vote for a health bill that would increase the federal budget deficit.