Via the Washington Post Wonkblog:
The Congressional Budget Office announced on Monday that the Affordable Care Act will cost $142 billion, or 11 percent, less over the next 10 years, compared to what the agency had projected in January.
The nonpartisan agency said the Affordable Care Act will cost less for two essential reasons. The first, and most significant, is that health insurance premiums are rising more slowly, and thus requires less of a government subsidy.
In addition, slightly fewer people are now expected to sign up for Medicaid and for subsidized insurance under the law’s marketplaces. That’s because the agency now says that more people than anticipated already had health insurance before the law took effect, and fewer companies than anticipated are canceling coverage.
Faster, cheaper, better and almost on time…
Roger Moore
Obviously, the Republicans have to kill it now before it grows stronger. In another couple of years, it will be completely unkillable.
mainmata
Do the CBO cost estimates have any way of factoring in the success of pilot programs that are aimed at bending the cost curve down through preventative care, shift from fee for service and other factors?
Belafon
@Roger Moore: In a few years it will cost so little that the Republicans will try to kill it to save the money.
Richard Mayhew
@mainmata: The CBO will bring those estimates into play if and when a pilot program is brought to scale. They’ll use the evidence gained in the experimental phase to estimate the size of the savings/coverage changes, but at the pilot and hell, the beta testing phase, the CBO is extremely reluctant to score savings as real or lasting.
This is a defensible decision in my opinion, but it probably produces a slight bias to overstating costs/understating savings.
Splitting Image
For now, anyway. Once the Republicans’ man takes over, he’ll bring in a new projection that the ACA will cost 50 jillion dollars over the next two weeks and increase the likelihood of the U.S. being invaded by ISIS by 159.3%.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the Chicago thugs got to the CBO again. Cooked books! Cooked books! somebody wake up Jack Welch and get him on CNBC, stat! He’s in a club chair at the Bitter Billionaires Club, of which he is chairman.
Bill Arnold
@Richard Mayhew:
We will need to see what the new CBO becomes under partisan Republican leadership.
catclub
@Roger Moore: Yeah, cause Medicare is a total winner for the Democrats.
Having a permanent grievance is much more useful for winning elections than actually improving the situation.
Mark Twain probably has a suitable quote – like ‘inside a dog its too dark to read.’
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I was so pleased to learn the two crabby old men in the Muppets are Waldorf and Statler.
David Koch
Oh, why, oh why didn’t we listen to our “Progressive Betters”:
“Kill the Bill!”
“Top 10 Reasons to Kill the Bill”
Doug r
Did I hear that a couple of deep red states have decided to accept the Medicaid expansion?
Lurking Canadian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: this! Job growth, economic growth, high Dow Jones, good Obamacare news…It’s all a fake to distract people from how [email protected] organized the Benghazi attack. Wake up sheeple!
Tenar Darell
@Roger Moore: you may be right, but I have a hard time believing that it is ever going to be safe from harm though. Republicans are still trying to kill Social Security after 80 years; usually by trying to chop it up into pieces and set the beneficiaries against each other. And they’re willing to play all sorts of games to do it. They were successful in the rule change for the SSDI re-balancing in January. So, I cannot believe that ACA will ever be entirely “safe,” though it may finally be “unkillable.”
chopper
obviously we need to put an end to this monstrosity before it gets even cheaper.
Richard Mayhew
@Doug r: There is talk that Utah, Montana and Kansas might accept the Medicaid money. Montana and Utah are not too surprising, as Montana was a misplaced finger from accepting it in 2013 while Utah has been fairly innovative on expanding coverage with a conservative twist for most of a decade.
Kansas is flat broke, and getting the Feds to pick up the Medicaid expansion tab while moving some people whom the state of Kansas pays for their current care to the Federal tab would be a net budget win, but that transfer can only happen with a full expansion.
Tractarian
#cookingthebooks
mdblanche
@catclub:
I’m pretty sure that was Groucho Marx, a man of many suitable quotes.
Elizabelle
What a surprise. Not.
FlipYrWhig
@Richard Mayhew:
Was it one of Jon Tester’s missing ones?
Liberty60
@Splitting Image:
Its that .3%” degree of precision that gives it extra truthiness.
Just a hundred fifty nine percent would be good enough for Fox viewers, but to convince the rest, ya gotta go that extra digit.
Xantar
@Splitting Image:
Technically, if the likelihood of ISIS invading the US changes from 0.0000001 to 0.0000001593, then it is indeed a 159.3% increase in likelihood.
Roger Moore
@Tenar Darell:
It may not ever be absolutely safe from harm, but the comparison to Social Security is instructive. The people who hate Social Security have been on a multi-decade campaign to undermine it, and they still haven’t managed to kill it outright. It’s popular enough that they have to use tricks like trying to undermine its popularity by telling lies about it first, or pitting one set of recipients against another, or trying to undermine its fiscal stability by one trick or another. With Obamacare, there are still a lot of people who are opposed or on the fence about it, so they might be able to take it on directly. In another few years, that won’t be practical and they’ll have to switch to the same kind of undermining tactics they’re using against Social Security. It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing.
RaflW
@Roger Moore: Scalia to the rescue!
Miserable old git that he is.
Patricia Kayden
Thank you, President Obama.
Pretty good for a Kenyan Socialist Muslim.