CNSNews.com - House Health Care Bill Neither ‘Durable’ Nor ‘Desirable’ Says Former CBO Director

CNSNews.com - House Health Care Bill Neither ‘Durable’ Nor ‘Desirable’ Says Former CBO Director

(CNSNews.com) – Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said the House Democrats' health care overhaul is neither durable nor desirable because it would raise insurance premiums, ration care, and fail to bring down the cost of health care in America.

Speaking Monday on a conference call with reporters, Holtz-Eakin said that House Democrats had failed to draft a bill that would deliver meaningful health care reform without breaking the budget. House Democrats unveiled their 1,990-page health care bill last Thursday. President Obama called it a “critical milestone.”

Holtz-Eakin, however, said: “We are going to generally raise the cost of existing insurance to those who already have it – and that’s a majority of Americans – and then put in place a fiscally rickety way to get insurance to those who do not have insurance.”

“As a result I think that these are reforms which are not durable in any deep sense and are not desirable from the point of view of policy,” he said.

He further said that many of the tax provisions in the bill were not sustainable revenue measures but budgetary “gimmicks” designed to manipulate the CBO’s 10-year scoring process.

“It continues to be true that it does not ‘bend the cost curve,’” said Holtz-Eakin. “This does not deliver on the fundamental promise of real health care reform, which is to have services of the same quality or greater at lower cost, and lower cost growth certainly.”

Instead, the House bill employs budget “gimmicks” to hide its true cost and make the bill appear fiscally responsible while creating another federal entitlement program that Congress will not be able to pay for, he said.