October 17, 2011
On Friday, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the department does not plan to implement the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) long-term care insurance program under current law. A number of people have inquired about whether and how CBO will reflect that statement in its budget projections and cost estimates for legislation. Here are the answers:
- In its next baseline budget projections (which will be issued in January), CBO will assume that the program will not be implemented (unless there are changes in law or other actions by the Administration that would supersede Friday's announcement).
- Following longstanding procedures, CBO takes new administrative actions into account when analyzing legislation being considered by the Congress—even if it has not published new baseline projections. Beginning immediately, therefore, legislation to repeal the CLASS provisions in current law would be estimated as having no budgetary impact.