A one-year delay in Obamacare’s mandate that all individuals carry qualifying insurance would save about $35 billion between 2014 and 2023, a Congressional Budget Office analysis has found.
The CBO examined the House of Representatives’ "Fairness for American Families Act," which proposes to delay the individual mandate. The bill came in response to the Obama administration’s unilateral decision to delay other parts of the law, such as the mandate that all employers over a certain size offer qualifying health insurance.
"CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting H.R. 2668 would reduce federal deficits by roughly $36 billion over the 2014-2018 period and by roughly $35 billion over the 2014-2023 period," the CBO wrote in the report.
The House’s bill was just one of the most recent attempts to repeal parts of the controversial Affordable Care Act. Implementation delays and a steady flow of bad news about the law’s effects have plagued the Obama administration’s signature domestic effort.
Speaker of the House John Boehner's (R., Ohio) office pledged that the House would take up another bill to prevent the Obama administration from subsidizing the purchase of health insurance on the new exchanges without verification.
The administration delayed the requirement that state exchanges verify the income of those buying insurance through the exchanges, causing some to worry about an increased risk of fraud.