Health News
- Washington Post Columnist Looks At Data, Talks To Experts And Concludes Obamacare Is Working, At Less Cost Than Expected
The federal health-reform law "has accomplished its goal of expanding coverage ? at a significantly lower cost than expected," columnist Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post "after talking to numerous health-care experts and examining the data."...
- State Won't Estimate Cost Of Greater-than-expected Medicaid Expansion For 'a Few Additional Months' ? After Nov. Election
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News The Republican-controlled state Senate's budget committee chair wants to know how much Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's expansion of the Medicaid program will cost, since enrollment in the federal-state program...
- Workers, Employers Blame Obamacare For Higher Premiums, But Experts Say The Causes Are A Lot More Complicated Than That
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News While the main provisions of the federal health-reform law are only now taking effect, some Americans are already saying it doesn't work and are blaming it for higher insurance premiums and deductibles. But the...
- About 290,000 More Kentuckians Would Be Eligible For Medicaid If State Expands Program, Urban Institute Study Finds
About 289,000 more people in Kentucky would be able to get health insurance if the state opts to expand its Medicaid program up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, as authorized by federal health-care reform, a new report from the Urban...
- Nonpartisan Budget Office Says Republican's Medicare Plan Would Make Those Now Under 54 Pay More
A proposal meant to reduce the federal deficit and cut spending would have future retirees paying more for health care, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates. The proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would repeal many...
Health News
Conflicting interpretations abound regarding CBO's report about cost, coverage of Affordable Care Act
By Tara Kaprowy
Kentucky Health News
Since the Congressional Budget Office released a report with revised estimates about how many people the Affordable Care Act will cover and how much it will cost, it has spawned a whirlwind of op-ed pieces with vastly opposing interpretations.
Kentucky Health News
Since the Congressional Budget Office released a report with revised estimates about how many people the Affordable Care Act will cover and how much it will cost, it has spawned a whirlwind of op-ed pieces with vastly opposing interpretations.
According to Julian Pecquet in The Hill, the estimate showed the federal health-care reform law will allow 30 million more people to get insurance coverage by 2016, down from the previous estimate of 32 million. Thus, the law's coverage provisions are now estimated to cost $1.083 trillion over the next 10 years, $50 billion less than last year's projection.
The CBO also estimates that 4 million Americans will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance by 2016, not the mere 1 million figure projected last year. It also estimates that 1 to 2 million fewer people will qualify for state health-insurance exchanges than initially thought, but an additional 1 million will qualify for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Provision, known in Kentucky as K-CHIP.
"CBO faults a slower than anticipated recovery for the soft numbers, along with technical changes to CBO's estimating procedures and legislative changes adopted over the past year," Pecquet reports. The changes in cost estimates are "due in part to slower growth in health-care spending resulting in an 8 percent drop in premiums, as well as taxes and penalties paid by employers and their workers as struggling businesses cut down on employer-sponsored coverage," Pecquet writes.
Conn Carroll, senior editorial writer for The Washington Examiner, has an entirely different view, saying the cost has doubled. "The gross cost of President Obama's health care law has risen from $940 billion when the bill was passed, to $1.76 trillion today. This did not sit well with Obamacare's leftist apologists," he writes. Carroll uses gross figures to arrive at his calculations.
Carroll is comparing apples to oranges, and the estimate hasn't doubled, writes Ezra Klein of The Washington Post. "The disparity in the cost estimates only comes when you take a different sample of years, in which the law is doing different things, in an economy of a different size. And even then, costs went up only if you take "gross" costs rather than "net" costs, which is a rather unusual way to think about the budget."
Paul Krugman of The New York Times weighs in too, but not on the numbers. He does say, "For all its imperfections, this reform would do an enormous amount of good. And one indicator of just how good it is comes from the apparent inability of its opponents to make an honest case against it."
Krugman said "most of the disinformation" about the reform is about costs. "Each new report from the Congressional Budget Office is touted as proof that the true cost of Obamacare is exploding, even when ? as was the case with the latest report ? the document says on its very first page that projected costs have actually fallen slightly."
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf defended in his blog the changes in estimates. "We will continue to update our estimates regarding health insurance coverage as new information becomes available about the implementation of the ACA, underlying trends in the health-care and health financial systems, and the probable responses to the legislation by businesses, families and others."
- Washington Post Columnist Looks At Data, Talks To Experts And Concludes Obamacare Is Working, At Less Cost Than Expected
The federal health-reform law "has accomplished its goal of expanding coverage ? at a significantly lower cost than expected," columnist Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post "after talking to numerous health-care experts and examining the data."...
- State Won't Estimate Cost Of Greater-than-expected Medicaid Expansion For 'a Few Additional Months' ? After Nov. Election
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News The Republican-controlled state Senate's budget committee chair wants to know how much Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's expansion of the Medicaid program will cost, since enrollment in the federal-state program...
- Workers, Employers Blame Obamacare For Higher Premiums, But Experts Say The Causes Are A Lot More Complicated Than That
By Molly Burchett Kentucky Health News While the main provisions of the federal health-reform law are only now taking effect, some Americans are already saying it doesn't work and are blaming it for higher insurance premiums and deductibles. But the...
- About 290,000 More Kentuckians Would Be Eligible For Medicaid If State Expands Program, Urban Institute Study Finds
About 289,000 more people in Kentucky would be able to get health insurance if the state opts to expand its Medicaid program up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, as authorized by federal health-care reform, a new report from the Urban...
- Nonpartisan Budget Office Says Republican's Medicare Plan Would Make Those Now Under 54 Pay More
A proposal meant to reduce the federal deficit and cut spending would have future retirees paying more for health care, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates. The proposal by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would repeal many...