By Martin Vaughan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend health insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so.
Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverage to their workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.
House Democrats have seized on that net cost figure to claim that their bill is below President Barack Obama’s upper limit which he set for health-care legislation of $900 billion.
