--- title: ACA: Repealing Obamacare Would Cost Up to $353 Billion description: It would cost a lot of money canonical: https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-19T19:47:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T08:22:40.041Z article:section: U.S. og:title: Here's How Much an Obamacare Repeal Would Cost og:description: According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office og:url: https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt426c808294ba2f2f/6988540106f2c115a433a949/obama-speech.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: barack obama og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's How Much an Obamacare Repeal Would Cost twitter:description: According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt426c808294ba2f2f/6988540106f2c115a433a949/obama-speech.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's How Much an Obamacare Repeal Would Cost by [Laura Lorenzetti / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Laura Lorenzetti / Fortune Jun 19, 2015 7:47 PM CUT  US President Barack Obama speaks about healthcare reforms and the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, during the Catholic Hospital Association Conference in Washington, DC, June 9, 2015. US President Barack Obama speaks about healthcare reforms and the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, during the Catholic Hospital Association Conference in Washington, DC, June 9, 2015.Saul Loeb—AFP/Getty Images by [Laura Lorenzetti / Fortune](/author/fortune/) ## Laura Lorenzetti / Fortune Jun 19, 2015 7:47 PM CUT The Congressional Budget Office has released its latest [estimates](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50252 "undefined") for the financial cost should Congress repeal the Affordable Care Act—and it wasn’t what many Republicans were hoping for. Repealing Obamacare would add as much as $353 billion to the U.S. budget deficit through 2025, the non-partisan CBO found. When taking into account the economic effects of future policy changes — what’s called “dynamic scoring” — the deficit inflation would be closer to $137 billion. That’s a pretty big sum, especially given that a CBO review in 2012 estimated that rescinding the law would add about $109 billion to the deficit over a decade. While getting rid of the law would generate savings by ending insurance subsidies to millions of Americans, those savings would be surpassed by reversing the law’s cuts to Medicare and scrapping its various tax tax increases, the CBO said. It would also increase the ranks of the uninsured by 19 million next year. Despite the ballooning deficit, repealing the act would help boost economic activity by 0.7% over the 2021-2025 time period. The gains would primarily be a result of more workers entering the labor force, according to the CBO analysis. That fits in with past analyses from the agency that predicted many workers would leave the labor market if they didn’t have to rely on an employer for insurance benefits. The new report comes as lawmakers, citizens and industry players await a decision from the Supreme Court on whether or not the ACA’s insurance subsidies are legal. If the subsidies are struck down, it could unravel many of Obamacare’s central tenets and possibly even lead to [a “death spiral” of rising insurance costs](http://fortune.com/2015/03/03/supreme-court-obamacare/ "undefined") for many people. _This_ [_article_](http://fortune.com/2015/06/19/obamacare-repeal-cost/ "undefined") _originally appeared on_ [_Fortune.com_](http://www.fortune.com "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/"},"headline":"Here's How Much an Obamacare Repeal Would Cost","datePublished":"2015-06-19T19:47:04.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T08:22:40.041Z","description":"According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office","url":"https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/","keywords":["Health Care","Obamacare","Money","United States"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt426c808294ba2f2f/6988540106f2c115a433a949/obama-speech.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Laura Lorenzetti / Fortune"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt426c808294ba2f2f/6988540106f2c115a433a949/obama-speech.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"barack obama","caption":"barack obama","creditText":"Saul Loeb—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/health-care/","name":"Health Care"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3928925/cbo-obamacare-repeal-cost/","name":"Here's How Much an Obamacare Repeal Would Cost"}}]}] ```