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Has Obamacare Reduced Health Insurance Totals?

Mike

Well-known member
CBO Misses Its Obamacare Projection by 24 Million People

4:34 PM, Mar 28, 2016 | By Jeffrey H. Anderson
Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says that just 177 million people, on average, will have private health insurance in any given month of this year—a shortfall of 24 million people.


Indeed, based on the CBO's own numbers, it seems possible that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of people with private health insurance. In 2013, the CBO projected that, without Obamacare, 186 million people would be covered by private health insurance in 2016—160 million on employer-based plans, 26 million on individually purchased plans. The CBO now says that, with Obamacare, 177 million people will be covered by private health insurance in 2016—155 million on employer-based plans, 12 million on plans bought through Obamacare's government-run exchanges, and 9 million on other individually purchased plans (plus a rounding error of 1 million).


In other words, it would appear that a net 9 million people have lost their private health plans, thanks to Obamacare—with a net 5 million people having lost employer-based plans and a net 4 million people having lost individually purchased plans.



None of this is to say that fewer people have "coverage" under Obamacare—it's just not private coverage. In 2013, the CBO projected that 34 million people would be on Medicaid or CHIP (the Children's Health Insurance Program) in 2016. The CBO now says that 68 million people will be on Medicaid or CHIP in 2016—double its earlier estimate. It turns out that Obamacare is pretty much a giant Medicaid expansion.


To be clear, the CBO—which has very generously labeled Obamacare's direct subsidies to insurance companies as "tax credits," even though sending money to insurers doesn't lower anyone's taxes—isn't openly declaring that Obamacare has reduced the number of people with private health insurance or that it has doubled the number of people on Medicaid or CHIP. Rather, the CBO maintains that Obamacare has actually increased the number of people with private health insurance by 9 million and has increased the number of people on Medicaid or CHIP by (just) 13 million. But it would seem that the only reason the CBO can make these claims is that it has moved the goalposts.


That is, the CBO has significantly altered its estimates for what 2016 would have looked like if Obamacare had never been passed. In 2013, the CBO projected that, in the absence of Obamacare, 186 million people would have had private health insurance in 2016, and 34 million people would have been on Medicaid or CHIP. The CBO now maintains that, in the absence of Obamacare, only 168 million people would have had private health insurance in 2016 (a reduction of 18 million people from its 2013 projection), while 55 million people would have been on Medicaid or CHIP (an increase of 21 million people from its 2013 projection). Somehow the hypothetical non-Obamacare world has changed a lot in the past three years. (The CBO doesn't explain how this could have happened.)


Even the CBO's revised figures for a non-Obamacare world, however, can't gloss over the fact that Obamacare has failed to hit its target for private health insurance by 24 million people. To see that, one must simply compare Obamacare's new tally of 177 million to its 2013 target of 201 million.


The CBO doesn't release retroactive scoring of Obamacare. Try finding, for example, tallies from the federal government (whether from the CBO or otherwise) on what Obamacare has actually cost so far. Rather, the CBO is like a handicapper who predicts the results of horseraces, but then never bothers to publish the races' actual results.
 

Steve

Well-known member
all I know is my cost share, deductible have all gone up... I am also limited in how I get prescriptions now...

while they "claim" that the mail express scripts is less costly they have dinged me more then once with "price not available" when placing order which usually means, it'll cost me more then they claimed..

My wife had one procedure turned down.. the DR office got the decision over turned,.. said most tricare claims are getting routinly turned down forcing the DR office to take more time to get them over turned..

the real kicker was the letter she received in Jan, saying she was pre-autherized for 5 office visits.. for a cancer survivor that isn't enough to cover just the basics..

as with any government "savings" it just means those who pay, will either pay more or get less, so those who pay nothing can get it "for Free"
I wouldn't mind paying a bit more but to be hassled over costs and then required to pay more just doesn't sit right..
 

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