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CBO Is Increasingly Skeptical About ObamaCare

Tam

Well-known member
CBO Is Increasingly Skeptical About ObamaCare
By Ben Domenech - February 7, 2013

The latest report from the Congressional Budget Office highlights a number of reasons why the CBO is concerned about the implementation of Obamacare. It boils down to this: Obamacare is going to be more expensive than the Obama administration thought, disrupt the marketplace more than they thought, and be tougher to implement than they thought.

First, more expensive: The CBO significantly hiked the amount of money needed to fund the subsidies available through Obamacare's exchanges, hiking them by $233 billion. IBD explains: “The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago. That's an increase of nearly 29%. The CBO upped the 10-year subsidy cost by $32 billion since just last August.” Part of that is expecting more people in the exchanges thanks to employer dumping and more limited Medicaid expansion, but “The rest is largely the result of the CBO's sharp increase in what it expects the average subsidy will be. Last year, the CBO said the average exchange subsidy for those getting federal help when ObamaCare goes into effect next year would be $4,780. Its latest estimate raised that to $5,510 — a 15% increase. All these numbers are up even more from the CBO's original forecast made in 2010, which had the first-year subsidy average at $3,970.”

Second, more disruptive: More employees will be dropped from their existing plans and fewer uninsured people will get coverage. The WSJ explains: “The CBO has long said it expects the new federal health law will prompt some companies to drop millions of employees from health plans because workers have new options to buy insurance on their own. In August, CBO put the number at four million over 10 years. Now it’s seven million. What changed? Nothing about the health law. Rather, the cliff deal that was enacted in January. When CBO crunched the numbers in August, it assumed that no cliff deal would be reached and higher tax rates would kick in. Economists typically assume that higher tax rates mean that more people are offered, and accept, employer-provided health benefits, says Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. That’s because health benefits are tax-deductible for companies, and so are any premiums that the employee is required to contribute.”

Third, more difficult to implement: The CBO isn't buying the administration's repeated assurances that everything will be ready to go on time when it comes to the health insurance exchanges. From the report: “CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] have slightly reduced their estimates of the rates at which people will enroll in the insurance exchanges or Medicaid as the expansion of coverage is implemented—a process that had already been anticipated to occur gradually. That change reflects the agencies’ judgment about a combination of factors, including the readiness of exchanges to provide a broad array of new insurance options, the ability of state Medicaid programs to absorb new beneficiaries, and people’s responses to the availability of the new coverage.”

National Journal explains: “Publicly, administration officials have promised that the new exchanges will be ready on time… But the CBO report expresses skepticism… In plain language, that means CBO thinks the marketplaces won’t have many insurance choices, the Medicaid enrollment systems will not be ready for new people to enroll, and people will be less enthusiastic about signing up for new insurance options.”

Taken together, this is a report that shows how already, Obamacare is failing to match the hopes of its creators in many respects. Expect this trend to continue in future years. This is going to be a lot of political fractiousness and market disruption over a policy which may ultimately end up nudging the insured percentage up only slightly.



Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/02/07/cbo_is_increasingly_skeptical_about_obamacare_116951.html#ixzz2SOpV54eS
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter

Can we just admit THEY DIDN"T THINK, but then maybe if they HAD READ IT they would have known it was going to be more expensive, more disruptive and be tough to implement since what they passed was a outline of a plan that is still being written. :roll:

Can we agree with Baucas and now Reid when they said Obamacare is a train wreck? :roll:

NO WAIT we have been saying that all along so I guess what we get to say now is
WE TOLD YOU SO
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
I'm not sure I follow.

How is it that a government program that takes over a significant percentage of the American economy could end up being more expensive than the politicians said, more disruptive than the politicians said, and be tougher to implement than the politicians said?

There's no precedent for such a thing. :roll:
 

Mike

Well-known member
Whitewing said:
I'm not sure I follow.

How is it that a government program that takes over a significant percentage of the American economy could end up being more expensive than the politicians said, more disruptive than the politicians said, and be tougher to implement than the politicians said?

There's no precedent for such a thing. :roll:

Sure you do. It's a Utopian, feel good, movement precipitated by the Left in order to bring the U.S. economy down to the level with the rest of the world. It's Buckwheat's way of apologizing to every other country for being a highly successful, capitalistic society.

The precedence began with FDR's socialist/communist "New Deal" and has escalated exponentially right through Johnson's "Great Society".

The huge number of people on Food Stamps and Disability today show that it's a plan coming to fruition............................
 

hopalong

Well-known member
If oldtimer was here he would say they all do it and it is Bush's fault... and that Tam should not be allowed to care cause she lives in Canada. That reader says she has a friend that knew someone who saw an aide reading the bill before it was passed.
 

Soapweed

Well-known member
hopalong said:
If oldtimer was here he would say they all do it and it is Bush's fault... and that Tam should not be allowed to care cause she lives in Canada. That reader says she has a friend that knew someone who saw an aide reading the bill before it was passed.

Hopalong, your observation is spot on. :wink:
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Mike said:
Whitewing said:
I'm not sure I follow.

How is it that a government program that takes over a significant percentage of the American economy could end up being more expensive than the politicians said, more disruptive than the politicians said, and be tougher to implement than the politicians said?

There's no precedent for such a thing. :roll:

Sure you do. It's a Utopian, feel good, movement precipitated by the Left in order to bring the U.S. economy down to the level with the rest of the world. It's Buckwheat's way of apologizing to every other country for being a highly successful, capitalistic society.

The precedence began with FDR's socialist/communist "New Deal" and has escalated exponentially right through Johnson's "Great Society".

The huge number of people on Food Stamps and Disability today show that it's a plan coming to fruition............................

So, there was precedent? :???: :???: :???:
 

Tam

Well-known member
Soapweed said:
hopalong said:
If oldtimer was here he would say they all do it and it is Bush's fault... and that Tam should not be allowed to care cause she lives in Canada. That reader says she has a friend that knew someone who saw an aide reading the bill before it was passed.

Hopalong, your observation is spot on. :wink:

I might disagree on one point Soapweed. I believe Oldtimer would have said
Tammy Faye, who believes she deserves to have a Doctor at her beck and call, has no right to speak up about anything in the US as she deserted her country to live in a foreign country with her sugar daddy.

Now that is typical Oldtimer :wink: But Hop is spot on on the rest of his comment.
 
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