The CBO downgraded its forecast for ObamaCare in its latest report. (Jovan Williams/IBD)
Health Reform:
ObamaCare has been taking lots of hits lately, but a new report from
the Congressional Budget Office is a gut punch. It shows that
ObamaCare’s outlook has worsened considerably as fewer people sign up
and costs rise more than expected.
To little fanfare and virtually no media coverage, the
Congressional Budget Office sharply downgraded its forecast for
ObamaCare
in its latest report, issued in late March. By just about every measure, things are looking worse than they did a year ago.
First, the CBO has cut enrollment goals for the ObamaCare exchanges. Its
March 2015 report
projected that enrollment would top out at 22 million. Now it puts the
ceiling at 18 million. And given ObamaCare’s track record so far, even
that’s optimistic.
Lower enrollment numbers should mean lower
taxpayer costs, since fewer people will be getting taxpayer-subsidized
insurance. But higher-than-expected insurance subsidies are soaking up
much of those savings.
Last year, CBO projected that the average subsidy would
be $4,040. Turns out, it was $4,240. CBO now thinks subsidies will
average $4,550 next year instead of $4,250. That is likely a reflection
of the fact that premiums leapt upward this year, and are likely to make
another big jump for next year.
As a result, even though the CBO expects that 4 million
fewer people will be getting insurance subsidies in 2024, the total cost
of those subsidies paid out that year will stay exactly the same: $99
billion.
ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion is also turning out to be
far more expensive than planned, forcing the CBO to hike its 10-year
Medicaid cost projection by $146 billion. That’s largely the result of
far more people signing up for Medicaid — 2 to 4 million more — than
the CBO had previously expected.
In addition, far more workers will find themselves without employer-provided benefits than promised. In its
initial report on ObamaCare
in 2010, CBO said 3 million workers at most would lose their employer
health benefits because of the law. Last year it claimed that 7 million
will have lost workplace coverage in a decade. Now it says 9 million
will likely be forced off employer plans.
And what about the uninsured? When Democrats shoved
ObamaCare onto President Obama’s desk in 2010, the public was told that
it would cut the number of uninsured by 32 million. That number has
since dropped 25%.
Looked at another way, ObamaCare is now slated to spend
$1.94 trillion over the next decade, and yet still leave one in 10
Americans without insurance.
Oh, and the revenues from ObamaCare taxes will be lower
than expected over the next decade, either because they just aren’t
producing as hoped, or because the White House has delayed various taxes
for political reasons. CBO says the employer mandate will raise $12
billion less than they said last year, the individual mandate penalty $6
billion less, and the Cadillac tax $28 billion less.
(The combination of higher costs and lower revenues, by
the way, means those promises about how ObamaCare would not add a dime
to the deficit have also proved unreliable.)
Repealing ObamaCare wouldn’t mean forcing millions off
insurance. What it would do is create the opportunity to enact
free-market reforms that would actually deliver on ObamaCare’s promise
of lower costs and expanded coverage.
Hopefully, voters will understand this when they cast their ballots in November.
UPDATE: The original version
compared CBO forecasts for total Medicaid enrollment in 2016 to current
enrollment numbers, using numbers that weren’t directly comparable.
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