21 million projected to sign up for ObamaCare by 2016 only 12 million have
By Dr. Merrill Matthews Ph.D.
Texas Insider Report: Dallas Texas In the latest of many failed Obama promises it appears that Obamacare will cost taxpayers a lot more than we were told. Of course most people have figured that out by now; the only mystery has been how much more? According to the Congressional Budget Office: at least $136 billion over 10 years.
The reason the cost projections were so wrong is that other CBO assumptions about Obamacare participation rates were so wrong.
As The Motley Fool reports the CBO initially projected that about 21 million people would sign up for health insurance in the exchanges by 2016 but only some 12 million have actually done so. And thats at the beginning of the year; by the end of the year perhaps 25 percent to 30 percent will drop their coverage for various reasons.
As an aside it also turns out that
those new enrollees are costing a lot more than the government predicted--as many of us warned at the time to no avail.
By contrast the CBO vastly underestimated the number of Americans who would enroll in Medicaid and the Childrens Health Insurance Plan (CHIP).
- The CBO estimated in 2010 that about 52 million would be in Medicaid and CHIP by 2016; it now says the number is more like 68 million and counting.
- And when the CBO made that original prediction it thought virtually every state would join the Medicaid expansion; 19 still havent.
- Some 16 million extra Medicaid and CHIP participants means that CBO missed its cost estimate by $146 billion over 10 years.
Once you subtract the federal savings because fewer people than predicted are receiving subsidies in the health insurance exchanges CBO estimates the cost will be an additional $136 billion over 10 years.
There are several reasons for the missed projections but The Fool notes that many lower-income workers are quitting their
employer-provided health insurance and enrolling in Medicaid instead which has much lower out-of-pocket costs.
In health insurance we call it the crowd-out effect when government freebies drive people away from private sector options that may cost something out-of-pocket.
The good news is that we have CBO confirmation for what many of us predicted all along
that Obamacare would cost a lot more than Obama promised.
The bad news is that taxpayers will be paying a lot more and that the president refuses as he always does to
acknowledge his historic blunder.
Dr. Merrill Matthews is a Resident Scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) in Dallas Texas. Follow him on Twit at twitter.com/MerrillMatthews.
