Yeah, this is a real shocker. A government program is going to cost taxpayers a lot more than any of its proponents said that it would. Well, if you believe the right-wing rag called the Los Angeles Times:
The large subsidies for health insurance that helped fuel the successful drive to sign up some 8 million Americans for coverage under the Affordable Care Act may push the cost of the law considerably above current projections, a new federal report indicates.
Nearly 9 in 10 Americans who bought health coverage on the federal government’s healthcare marketplaces received government assistance to offset their premiums.
Which increased even middle class Americans’ dependence on government. Which was the Democrats’ plan, of course.
While the generous subsidies helped consumers, they also risk inflating the new health law’s price tag in its first year.
The report suggests that the federal government is on track to spend at least $11 billion on subsidies for consumers who bought health plans on marketplaces run by the federal government, even accounting for the fact that many consumers signed up for coverage in late March and will only receive subsidies for part of the year.
That total does not count the additional cost of providing coverage to millions of additional consumers who bought coverage in states that ran their own marketplaces, including California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York. About a third of the 8 million people who signed up for coverage this year used a state-run marketplace.
Federal officials said subsidy data for these consumers were not available.
It must have been on Lois Lerner’s hard drive.
On the bright side, fewer Americans will have to pay up for the Democrats’ Obamacare plan, because we have fewer taxpayers now, thanks in no small part to Obamacare’s aggressive disincentives for small businesses to hire.
But those taxpayers who are paying for Obamacare…they’re gonna get screwed.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in April that the annual cost of subsidies will rise to $23 billion next year and $95 billion in 2024, although the budget office continued to project that all the law’s costs will be offset by additional revenue it raises and by cuts in other federal healthcare spending.
Well, we can pay for that by shifting costs from all those wars we’re not fighting…yet.
Update: The LA Times says that it made a big mistake.
June 18, 10:30 a.m.: Because of an error in calculations, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a new federal report indicates that the cost of insurance subsidies under President Obama’s healthcare law may be running above current projections. The figures in the report actually suggest that the cost of the subsidies is roughly in line with current projections from the Congressional Budget Office.
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