Free Choice Amendment Score

The CBO did a score of Ron Wyden’s free choice amendment and concluded:

Relative to the Chairman’s mark, the amendment as modeled would reduce the net impact on federal deficits by about $1 billion over 10 years. There would not be substantial effects on the total number of people with insurance coverage or the sources of that coverage, relative to the Chairman’s mark.

This is less savings than Wyden was hoping to see, but it’s still confirmation that it saves money. And it’s also confirmation that the amendment, as written, wouldn’t blow up the employer-based system or destabilize anyone’s coverage. Politically that makes this look very appealing, though substantively I suppose it also means that even a more ambitious, Wydenized version of Baucuscare still isn’t going to produce any really dramatic changes in American health care.