No CBO health score before House vote

House Republicans will vote to repeal President Obama’s healthcare law this week without an official cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

CBO said Monday that it is still evaluating the impact of the Supreme Court’s recent healthcare decision and won’t have a final score ready until the week of July 23.

The budget office said it can’t evaluate the effect of changes to the healthcare law, including repeal, until it finishes its post-Supreme Court analysis.

The delay could deny Democrats a useful talking point: When CBO scored House Republicans’ first bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it estimated that repeal would probably increase the federal deficit by roughly $145 billion over 10 years.

{mosads}A lot has changed since then — the law lost almost half of its deficit reduction when the administration gave up implementing a new program for long-term-care insurance, known as the CLASS Act. And Congress pushed some costly benefits toward the end of CBO’s 10-year budget window, so those policies might appear more expensive now than they did in 2009 or 2011.

Republican lawmakers are eagerly awaiting CBO’s revisions, which will likely include an update on the healthcare law’s new taxes. Because the Supreme Court upheld the law’s individual mandate as a tax, the GOP has renewed its argument that the Affordable Care Act is a massive tax hike on working families.

Updated revenue estimates could help Republicans keep that argument in the spotlight.