In early March 2010, during the height of the raging debate on the healthcare reform bill then making its way through Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a speech to the National Association of Counties, told the assembled group of the dire need to pass the legislation with the now famous phrase, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” That simple statement crystallized for many of the bill’s opponents all that was emblematically wrong with the entire healthcare debate.
The Affordable Care Act
Now, five months after the March 23, 2010, passage of the 2,000 plus page Affordable Care Act, critics can savor a moment of poetic justice that Democrats, much to their consternation, are now finding for themselves what’s in the bill, and the answer has them very troubled. The claim they used most vigorously as their most sellable point in favor of passing the bill, substantial cost and deficit reduction, has run aground onto the rocky shoals of fiscal reality.
Once having argued the bill would reduce the deficit by $124 billion over 10 years, they were brought back to earth in May 2010 when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had calculated the legislation would actually increase the budget deficit by $123 billion in fiscal years 2010-2011; $141 billion during the period 2010 -2015; and $134 billion during the overall period from 2010-2020.
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