Author Topic: Cost of ObamaCare just jumped by an additional $111 Billion Dollars  (Read 289 times)

Soul Crusher

  • Competitors
  • Getbig V
  • *****
  • Posts: 39256
  • Doesnt lie about lifting.
Republican probes $111 billion jump in cost of healthcare law

By Sam Baker - 03/02/12 11:48 AM ET



http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/213829-camp-probes-100-billion-jump-in-cost-of-healthcare-law?tmpl=component&print=1&page=



 
A powerful House Republican wants the Obama administration to explain why it’s asking for an extra $111 billion to implement part of the healthcare reform law.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is asking about a spike in the estimated costs of subsidies to help people buy private insurance — a central, and expensive, component of the new healthcare law.

The administration’s budget request this year included $111 billion more for subsidies than its request last year. The difference falls across the same seven-year window.


“This staggering increase in health insurance exchange subsidy spending cannot be explained by legislative changes or new economic assumptions, and therefore must reflect substantial changes in underlying assumptions regarding the program’s utilization and cost,” Camp wrote Friday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Treasury Department said the increase is technical and does not reflect any change in how the administration plans to implement the healthcare law.

"The Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit and lower health care costs for millions of Americans," Treasury spokeswoman Sabrina Siddiqui said. "Changes in the law made by Congress account for roughly two-thirds of the adjustment and the remainder come from revised technical assumptions. The estimates do not assume changes in what Exchanges look like, the cost of insurance or the number of Americans who will get their insurance in this new marketplace.”


The healthcare law establishes new marketplaces for private insurance, called exchanges, in each state. The exchanges are open to individuals and small businesses, who usually pay much more for insurance than people who get their coverage through a large employer. Most people who buy coverage through an exchange will get subsidies to help cover the cost.

Camp’s letter cites Congressional Budget Office scores of two bills that passed since the White House submitted its last budget. Together, the bills were expected to cut the cost of exchange subsidies by about $9 billion, he said, making the White House’s projected increase all the more surprising.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a Ways and Means hearing earlier this week that she was unfamiliar with the issue.

— This post was updated at 12:51.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Soul Crusher

  • Competitors
  • Getbig V
  • *****
  • Posts: 39256
  • Doesnt lie about lifting.
Re: Cost of ObamaCare just jumped by an additional $111 Billion Dollars
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2012, 05:17:13 AM »
Free Republic
Browse · Search   Pings · Mail   News/Activism
Topics · Post Article
Skip to comments.

ObamaCare's Continued Chaos
patriotpost.us ^ | Friday, March 2, 2012 | Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
Posted on March 2, 2012 11:03:31 PM EST by Iam1ru1-2

To no thinking person's surprise, the Obama administration admitted this week that another element of ObamaCare is going to cost more than originally expected. This isn't really news so much as it is yet another confirmation that the president's takeover of health care will be an absolute disaster.

The latest program to exceed expectations is the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which provides health insurance for people who can't obtain coverage through private carriers. The PCIP was meant to be an interim program phasing out in 2014, at which point all insurers will be required to accept all comers who want coverage. In November 2010, the federal government estimated an annual cost of $13,000 per enrollee. Since the program's launch last year, some 50,000 people have signed up, and now the expected cost is around $29,000 per enrollee.

While we're on the subject, the outrageous contraception mandate remains yet another tarnished gem in the ObamaCare crown. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced this week that the administration has begun "outreach" to officials in the Catholic Church, insurers and groups that run self-insured insurance plans. However, Sebelius' "outreach" isn't in search of a compromise with faith-based groups whose rights are being trampled for the sake of free contraception. The administration hasn't backed down from its non-compromise offer that the cost for free contraception be shifted from faith-based employers to private insurance companies. The mandate is here to stay, and faith-based employers have 18 months to comply.

One of the free contraception mandate's more vocal supporters testified this week before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee about how tough life can be without free birth control. The hearing was nothing more than a showpiece for the issue with a single witness, Sandra Fluke (is there a pun here?), a Georgetown law student and self-professed "reproductive rights activist." Fluke made the absurd claim that free contraception is a necessity at her school, which currently doesn't provide it. "Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy," she complained. Of course, the HHS mandate has nothing to do with university students, but that's beside her point.

Fluke asserted that contraception could cost $3,000 through three years of law school. That's a lot of money to spend on protected sex over that time frame. In fact, humorist Frank J. Fleming quipped, "Anyone buying that much contraception should probably be writing it off on her taxes as a business expense." Fluke's assertion that she and other women have an absolute right to contraception at someone else's expense is disturbing. There is no right to sex free of consequences. Fluke also implies that the women of Georgetown law have no control over their urges or actions, all the while thinking she's standing up for women's rights. When did "get your laws off my body" become "you have to pay for the stuff that goes into my body"?

The most important question, of course, is just where within the Constitution is the government granted the power to mandate this sort of thing for private or religious organizations? This was asked of Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) by one of her constituents at a recent town hall. She replied, "Well, basically, we're not looking to the Constitution on that aspect of it." We suppose Hochul's candor is refreshing, but it didn't sit well with the crowd -- nor should it. Hochul attempted to defend ObamaCare by stating that Congress determined that citizens are entitled to health care. "So why don't we provide free access to Band-Aids and cancer screenings?" the constituent followed up. "Aren't those more important to health care than contraception?" Hochul could only say, "Well, clearly more work needs to be done." Nice understatement.

In the Senate, an amendment to impose a religious-conscience exemption to ObamaCare was rejected Thursday. Proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act was attached to an upcoming transportation bill. Democrats were nearly united in opposition, and retiring Maine "Republican" Olympia Snowe was the only GOP member to oppose it. Obama, adamantly pushing "free" contraception, would have been forced to veto the whole transportation bill in order to prevent the conscience exemption from again being the law. His other option would have been to let the amendment pass and hope it takes some of the heat off as the presidential election moves forward.

The one bit of good news is that a House committee voted to throw out the "death panel" provision of ObamaCare. The Independent Payment Advisory Board was supposed to help with cost control, but has been accurately tagged as a "death panel" because of its rationing of care. All things considered, however, a new administration and a more Liberty-friendly Congress must be installed in January to repeal this monstrosity.

Skip8282

  • Getbig V
  • *****
  • Posts: 7004
Re: Cost of ObamaCare just jumped by an additional $111 Billion Dollars
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2012, 04:07:32 PM »
"This staggering increase in health insurance exchange subsidy spending cannot be explained by legislative changes or new economic assumptions, and therefore must reflect substantial changes in underlying assumptions regarding the program’s utilization and cost,” Camp wrote Friday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner."




In all fairness, we tried to warn these fucking liberal tools.


Soul Crusher

  • Competitors
  • Getbig V
  • *****
  • Posts: 39256
  • Doesnt lie about lifting.
Re: Cost of ObamaCare just jumped by an additional $111 Billion Dollars
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2012, 04:09:55 PM »
"This staggering increase in health insurance exchange subsidy spending cannot be explained by legislative changes or new economic assumptions, and therefore must reflect substantial changes in underlying assumptions regarding the program’s utilization and cost,” Camp wrote Friday in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner."

In all fairness, we tried to warn these fucking liberal tools.




Yes we did.    Idiots like straw, mal, blackass, etc kept screaming "CBO CBO CBO".  Barf.   

Those fools and drones are nowhere to be found now on this.

Soul Crusher

  • Competitors
  • Getbig V
  • *****
  • Posts: 39256
  • Doesnt lie about lifting.
Re: Cost of ObamaCare just jumped by an additional $111 Billion Dollars
« Reply #4 on: March 04, 2012, 05:25:03 AM »
Skip to comments.

Is Anyone Suprised that Obamacare is More Expensive than Promised?
Townhall.com ^ | March 4, 2012 | Daniel J. Mitchell
Posted on March 4, 2012 8:21:26 AM EST by Kaslin

Washington is filled with people who exaggerate, prevaricate, dissemble, and obfuscate. And those are the people I like. The ones I don’t like are much worse.

That’s why, during the Obamacare debate, I warned that the numbers were utterly dishonest.

We were told, if you remember those grim days, that adopting a giant new entitlement somehow was going to lead to less red ink, but I doubt anybody with an IQ above room temperature actually believed that nonsense, notwithstanding the supposedly non-partisan estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Well, Obamacare was enacted and we’ve already seen evidence that supporters were being less than truthful.

"I'm shocked, shocked, that Obamacare is more expensive than the original forecasts"

And now there are additional re-estimates suggesting the problem is much worse than even critics feared.

One wonders whether supporters of the legislation will now imitate Inspector Renault from Casablanca and pretend that they are surprised about this outcome.

Here are some excerpts from an Associated Press report about these “surprise” findings.

Cost estimates for a key portion of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law have ballooned by $111 billion from last year’s budget… the estimated cost of helping millions of middle-class Americans buy health insurance has jumped by about 30 percent for an eight-year period, from 2014-2021. Administration officials say the explanation lies in budget technicalities and that there are no significant changes in the program that would raise concerns. …Cost overruns for the health care overhaul could create new political problems for Obama by undermining the law’s promise to reduce federal deficits. The revised health care numbers, buried deep in the president’s budget, stumped lawmakers and some administration officials earlier in the week. At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is in charge of carrying out the health care law, indicated she was unaware of the changes. …Last year’s budget estimated the cost of the aid to be $367 billion from 2014-2021. This year’s budget puts it at $478 billion over the same period.

A mature and dignified person would resist the temptation to say “I told you so.” But I’m neither mature nor dignified, so here’s an encore edition of my video on the Obamacare cost estimates.

This is a case, though, where I wish I had been wrong. Unfortunately, if you’re predicting bad results from government intervention, you’re on firm ground – especially if politicians are trying to deal with a mess caused by previous forms of government intervention.











I TOLD YOU SO!!!!    The fluking drones like you know who are proven wrong once again.