The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will cost taxpayers $1.76 trillion, double the $900 billion price tag advanced by the president, and could lead businesses to cut off coverage to 20 million Americans, according to a report released Wednesday.
From the Washington Examiner:
The CBO released its latest cost estimate of Obamacare’s spending provisions showing that the law will cost $1.76 trillion through 2022. But even that doesn’t capture the law’s true price tag.
Since Obamacare will not be fully implemented until 2014, we will not know until next year what a full 10-year cost estimate of the law looks like. But, extrapolating yesterday’s estimate forward, The Washington Examiner‘s Phil Klein predicts the final ten-year cost of Obamacare will exceed $2 trillion, more than double what Obama said it would cost.
On Thursday, the CBO provided an equally explosive report on the number of people who will lose privately provided health insurance once Obamacare is fully implemented. The office provided best case (5 million) and worst case (20 million) estimates on the report, both of which are far higher than previous estimates.
From the Hill:
Under CBO's best estimate, 11 million mostly low-wage workers would lose their employer coverage. About 3 million would choose to drop their coverage to go into the new subsidized health exchanges or on Medicaid, while another 9 million would gain employer-sponsored coverage, for a net total of 5 million people losing employer coverage in 2019. …
Last year, CBO's best estimate was that only 1 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.