Thursday, June 19, 2014

ACA/Obamacare: For Whom the Price Rises, It Rises for Thee (The Few, The Proud, The Taxpayer)

“The Health and Human Services report, released this week, claims that of the 5.4 million people who enrolled in ObamaCare through the federal HealthCare.gov site, 4.7 million got tax subsidies to offset the cost of their premiums.

It goes on to say that once you factor in the subsidy, the average premium was $82 a month. "Consumers have more choices, and they're paying less for their premiums," boasted new HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell.

That claim itself is dubious. Even with the subsidies, ObamaCare is hardly cheap.”


“After looking over the HHS report, Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, concluded that while ObamaCare might be a bargain for low-income families who can get private insurance for very little money, it's "not attractive to working-class and middle-class families and individuals."

The other fact conveniently left out of the HHS report is that the cost of ObamaCare to taxpayers is far higher than expected.


Early last year, the Congressional Budget Office projected that ObamaCare's tax credits would cost $15 billion in its first year. One year later, it had cut that number down to $13 billion, and then lowered it again in April to $10 billion.

But using the administration's enrollment and subsidy numbers, it turns out that the subsidy costs just for those who signed up through the federal exchange will top $11 billion.

The Los Angeles Times reports that if these subsidy numbers hold true for the 14 state-run exchanges, ObamaCare's first-year subsidy costs will climb to $16.5 billion.

Some of the increase is due to the higher-than-expected sign-ups. But a big cause was the fact that a larger share of enrollees got subsidies than the CBO expected. And the average tax credit was bigger. The CBO had assumed the average credit would be about $222 a month. The actual number was $264 — about 19% higher.” - Surprise: ObamaCare Costs More Than Predicted, Investors Business Daily, 06/18/2014

Link to the entire article appear below:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/061814-705269-surprise-obamacare-is-costing-more-than-predicted.htm


 





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