The White House was ecstatic. “The estimates released today by CBO once again confirm the progress we’ve made,” said deputy press secretary Eric Schultz.
Taxpayers, however, should worry. A closer look at the CBO’s numbers shows that Obamacare is growing much more expensive — and disruptive.
The CBO now expects Obamacare to cover far fewer uninsured than it previously thought. In a March 2011 report, the nonpartisan agency predicted that Obamacare would extend coverage to 34 million uninsured by 2021. It has since downgraded that number to 27 million — and concluded that Obamacare will leave 31 million Americans without insurance.
So the law’s overall price tag has declined only because it’s covering fewer people.
Left unsaid is the fact that Obamacare is set to spend more per person. If the law is not repealed, Obamacare will shell out $7,740 in subsidies for every person who gains coverage in 2021. That’s a 7% increase over the agency’s per-person estimate in 2011.
The CBO now projects that the law will cost nearly $2 trillion over the next ten years. Obamacare’s subsidies alone will cost $1.1 trillion. In 2010, the agency put the cost of the entire law at $940 billion over its first decade.
Obamacare hasn’t just failed to expand coverage as projected — it’s caused more people to lose their insurance than its architects intended. The CBO now estimates that 10 million people will lose their employer-provided health benefits by 2021. That’s a tenfold increase over the agency’s 2011 projections. - Buried In The Numbers: Obamacare's Costs Are Climbing, Not Receding, Forbes, 02/09/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2015/02/09/buried-in-the-numbers-obamacares-costs-are-climbing-not-receding/#comment_reply
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