Reuters is spinning hard, but, can’t quite get away from the dismal numbers, written to be as confusing as possible. The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein is having none of it
President Obama’s national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.
By my math, that’s, well, a lot of money. Almost double the previous projects. And that is the full 10 year cost per the CBO, now that actual costs are included, rather than accounting gimmicks. And, that is the gross cost, before the taxes, er, penalties, er, what are they today? ….. anyhow, from the Reuters article
“The fact that the outlook for the new law continues to worsen so rapidly, even before it’s implemented, is ominous,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.
and
These cost reductions are largely due to lower estimates for subsidies and tax credits associated with the law’s planned insurance exchanges for individual coverage.
They also include higher revenues from penalties and the tax effects of higher taxable income, as private employers drop health insurance plans in favor of extra compensation for employees to buy insurance via the exchanges.
Wait, I thought that “if you liked your insurance plan, you could keep it”. Weren’t we also told that there should be no fear that companies would drop their plans, because this basically just extends health insurance to illegal aliens and moochers those without?
But the analysis also projected that some 4 million fewer people will obtain insurance through employers or through the insurance exchanges promoted by the healthcare law by 2016 than estimated a year ago.
Wait, what? Fewer people with insurance? That’s because companies will drop their insurance and just pay the fine, for reasons discussed many times. To put it simply, it is cheaper for the companies to pay the fine, expected to be $2,000, than pay the $6k-$12K they pay each year per employee. And, if anyone in the company gets insurance through the exchange, the company has to pay the fine for ever employee. Companies won’t take the chance, especially since so many who have part time employees, for which either they offer much more expensive plans or no plans.
It’s also worth noting that we were told time and again during the health care debate that the law didn’t represent a government takeover of health care. But by 2022, according to the CBO, 3 million fewer people will have health insurance through their employer, while 17 million Americans will be added to Medicaid and 22 million will be getting coverage through government-run exchanges.
I think the CBO is seriously underestimating the number that will lose coverage from being dropped. And many will simply not get insurance except for when they need it. And for the exchanges, hey, Someone Else is picking up most of the tab, so why not go under the Central Government controlled plans. This POS law needs to be struck down and/or repealed, and replaced with common sense legislation that actually would expand coverage.
Other Right Wing Raaaaacists covering, via Memeorandum: The Lonely Conservative, Weasel Zippers, americanthinker.com, Business Insider, The Right Sphere, Doug Ross
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.
Hey wait a minute. You link to the follow up article that Klein wrote, which means you actually read it.
But if you read it, why don’t you report the fact that he walks back, like completely, his entire point from the first article To wit…
“the $1.76 trillion cited above is for the years 2013 through 2022, but if we want to compare changes to last year’s estimates, we have to use the comparable years of 2012 through 2021. (Estimates for 2022 only became available today.)
The CBO now projects that from 2012 through 2021 the federal government will spend $168 billion more on Medicaid than it expected last year, $97 billion less on subsidies for people to purchase insurance on government-run exchanges and $20 billion less on tax credits to small employers. That works out to a $51 billion increase in the gross cost of expanding coverage from what the CBO estimated a year ago. However, the CBO also expects the federal government to collect more revenue from penalties on individuals and employers, as well as other taxes. These revenue increases will more than offset the spending increases, according to the CBO, so it now expects the cost of Obamacare during those years to be $48 billion lower.”
Geee, minor little change, that eh? From “cost double” to costs go down 48 billion.” Are you going to apologize to Obama or something???? 🙂
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Those same figures are in the Reuters article.