CBO Won't Score 'Medicare for All' Bill Despite GOP Request

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) apparently is not inclined to score Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" bill despite a request from a ranking Republican senator, The Hill reports.

The reason: The CBO isn't going to spend time scoring a bill that is a non-starter with a Republican Congress, despite the ask from Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.

"The cost estimating units are usually operating at full or over capacity,” Robert Reischauer, CBO director in the 1990s, told The Hill. “It isn’t like they can accept all requests."

Another former CBO director told The Hill it would take months to score something as complex as a single-payer healthcare bill.

So, while one study put the cost of Sanders' proposal at $32 trillion, the CBO likely isn't going to score it unless it comes out of committee, which isn't happening in this Congress.

“There have been a number of different reports out there, $32 trillion,” Barrasso told The Hill. “It looks like we have some pretty solid numbers on how expensive it is.”

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