The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released an updated CBO report on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It is much better than expected. It makes the lies that are continuously spewed about Obamacare even more incredulous and morally reprehensible.
The CBO report on Obamacare said the following.
The new estimates, which are included in CBO’s latest baseline projections, reflect CBO’s most recent economic forecast, account for administrative actions taken and regulations issued through March 2014, and incorporate new data and various modeling updates.
Relative to their previous projections, CBO and JCT now estimate that the ACA’s coverage provisions will result in lower net costs to the federal government: The agencies now project a net cost of $36 billion for 2014, $5 billion less than the previous projection for the year; and $1,383 billion for the 2015–2024 period, $104 billion less than the previous projection
Why does the CBO Report conclude the Obamacare numbers are improving?
The reductions in estimated federal costs are the net result of a combination of factors. The current projections:
- Incorporate the economic forecast that CBO published in February 2014; because the projections of the effects of the ACA’s coverage provisions published in February were partial and preliminary, they did not incorporate the economic forecast published by CBO at that time.
- Incorporate further analyses by CBO and JCT of exchange premiums and the characteristics of exchange plans.
- Include revisions to estimates of the number of early retirees with employment-based coverage under the ACA.
- Account for regulations and other administrative actions that were put in place between early December 2013 and the end of March 2014.
President Obama has always made a moral case for affordable healthcare. He also made the case that unless the cost curve of healthcare was flattened, exploding deficits would continue. As the CBO Report shows, that curve is flattening.
There is much more good news in the report. Specifically,
- The budgetary impact of Obamacare is smaller.
- Premiums are lower than expected.
- The rise in premium for 2015 is projected to be less than expected.
It was always known that if Obamacare was allowed to flourish, it would be mostly successful. After-all, it was successfully working in Massachusetts. Any big new social program will have problems that need fixing. Scrapping Obamacare instead of fixing any issues that arise would be fiscally and morally irresponsible,
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