GOP Sen. Ron Johnson pressed his case against the new health care law in a conference call with reporters Monday, saying the Obama administration was grossly underestimating its costs.

“It’s pretty obvious the health care law, certainly not in the first ten years, is not going to reduce the deficit -- it’s going to blow a hole in an already broken budget,” said Johnson, who last week made his argument in person to US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as she testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee.(You can see Johnson question Sebelius here). 

Johnson, who ran against the health care law when he got elected in 2010, contends the Administration is vastly understating the number of people likely to lose their employer-based health care under the new law. He argues that employers will have a powerful financial incentive under the law to stop offering coverage to employees. The result will be ballooning government costs, Johnson says.

“The cost of this health care law is so uncertain … don’t you think we ought to put the brakes on?” Johnson asked Sebelius last Wednesday at the Senate hearing. 

Sebelius replied that the current rise in health care costs is “the very reason that we desperately need a new insurance market. The private insurance market is basically on a death spiral, where … doing nothing is really not an option.”

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