Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook. Here are some of the most important health care numbers to know from today’s report:
- Millions more projected to lose their coverage. As the CBO writes, “CBO and JCT project that, as a result of the ACA, between 6 million and 7 million fewer people will have employment-based insurance coverage each year from 2016 through 2024 than would be the case in the absence of the ACA. That change is the net result of projected increases and decreases in offers of health insurance from employers and changes in enrollment by workers and their families.”
- 1.5 million enrolled in non-compliant plans in 2014. As a result of the Administration’s unilateral and last minute decision to allow plans that are not compliant with Obamacare’s many new rules to continue into 2014, a “fix” to offset the nearly 5 million reported plan cancellations, the CBO estimates that 1.5 million non-compliant plans will exist in the individual and small group markets in 2014, with .5 million continuing on into 2015.
- Mandate penalties total $203 billion from 2015-2024. Penalties paid by employers of 50 or more full-time workers who do not offer their employees health coverage are projected to total $151 billion from 2015-2024. The individual mandate tax that will be levied on individuals who do not purchase health coverage is expected to cost Americans $51 billion over this period.
- 31 million uninsured. After spending nearly $2 trillion to expand insurance coverage, Obamacare is still projected to leave 31 million people uninsured in 2024.
- Exchange enrollment adjusted for 2014. “In light of technical problems that impeded many people’s enrollment in exchanges,” the CBO has downwardly adjusted its exchange enrollment projections for 2014 by 1 million people, now projecting only 6 million people will gain exchange coverage this year.
- Gross cost of Obamacare’s major coverage provisions from 2015-2024 is nearly $2 trillion. Spending of $899 billion and a reduction in revenues of $137 billion for premium assistance tax credits, in addition to spending $167 billion for cost-sharing subsidies (page 107) for a total exchange subsidy cost of $1.203 trillion. Medicaid expansion and CHIP spending from Obamacare is projected to cost $792 billion from 2015-2024. A gross total cost of these provisions amounting to $1.995 trillion over this period.
NOTE: An earlier version of this post contained the wrong projected cost of CHIP spending in the final paragraph.