The Government Accountability Office, the federal government's auditor, has another in a long series of inconvenient truths for conservative "deficit hawks" trying to justify their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act because of its costs. Repealing the ACA would mean "[s]pending on health care grows much more rapidly" and the debt would increase. It also provides added pressure for the Republicans to come up with that thus-far nonexistent replacement plan.
Here's the basic idea, in a graph form.
The blue line is the baseline scenario, assuming current law, including last year's Budget Control Act, is implemented and Bush tax cuts expire, as they're slated to. The alternative scenario is the other line, that starts shooting up precipitously at about 2025.
As our 2011 simulations showed, if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is implemented as intended it would have a major effect on the gap but would not eliminate it. [...]
The pace at which deficits grow and the resulting debt buildup vary depending on the assumptions used: deficits and debt grow less rapidly in the Baseline Extended simulation than under the Alternative simulation, which has both lower revenues and higher spending levels than the Baseline Extended simulation. Under the Baseline Extended simulation, debt held by the public would exceed its post–World War II historical high of 109 percent of GDP by 2048; under the Alternative simulation it would cross this threshold by 2026.
The report makes clear that ACA would help control the growth of health care costs, while repealing it and replacing it with something else would mean the public debt reaches historic highs two decades sooner. (Once more, with feeling: Republicans don't care about the debt.)
Obviously, to really bring that cost curve down, more reform will be necessary, but tossing what's already been done—whether done by the Supreme Court or the Republican Congress—would be disastrous. So, shouldn't there be some pressure on the Republicans to come up with a real plan?