On September 9th, 2009, President Obama, while addressing members of Congress and the American people, said:
Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.
Now we learn that we were being mislead by Mr. Obama (not for the first time), and ObamaCare will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.
Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years." When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.
Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.
Mr. Klein continues in a separate post:
The big picture takeaway is that due mostly to weaker economic projections, the CBO now projects that more people will be obtaining insurance through Medicaid than it estimated a year ago at a greater cost to the government, but fewer people will be getting insurance through their employers or the health care law’s new subsidized insurance exchanges. Overall spending will be higher than estimated a year ago, but increased revenue from penalties and taxes will more than offset this. Also interesting: CBO now expects two million fewer people to be covered as a result of the health care law than previously projected.
It’s worth keeping in mind that what the CBO did today was update its forecasts for the cost of expanding insurance coverage under the health care law. That represents, by far, the bulk of the spending in the legislation, but it doesn’t constitute a full rescoring of the law or a revised deficit estimate. That would have to include estimates for all the taxes, Medicare cuts and other spending in the law. Also, the $1.76 trillion cited above is for the years 2013 through 2022, but if we want to compare changes to last year’s estimates, we have to use the comparable years of 2012 through 2021. (Estimates for 2022 only became available today.)
Rush made a great point today as to why Obama kept his original estimates under $1 trillion. After all, what would an Obama speech be without a jab at the previous administration:
We were already accumulating mountains of new debt thanks to Obama's stimulus. And for some reason the magic number was $1 trillion. Well, the reason was the Iraq war cost about a trillion dollars. So the selling point from the Democrats was that it wasn't gonna spend any new money. "We're just gonna get out of Iraq; we're gonna stop fighting the Iraq war. We're gonna take that money and put it where it really matters: Health care, affordable health care for all Americans!"
I guess the only thing left to say is just a repeat of what was said the same night Obama gave his health care speech;
How right you were, Joe Wilson.
UPDATE: 03/15/12
From Rep. Paul Ryan:
CBO CONFIRMS ANOTHER BROKEN PROMISE IN THE PRESIDENT’S HEALTH CARE LAW
March 15, 2012
WASHINGTON – Earlier today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in response to a request from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, released an analysis of the President’s health care law, finding that three to five million Americans will be pushed out of their employer-provided health insurance each year from 2019 through 2022.
In response to CBO’s confirmation of another broken promise by President Obama, Chairman Paul Ryan issued the following statement:“President Obama’s string of empty promises is quickly becoming a disappointing trail of broken promises. He promised Americans that his overhaul of the health care sector would not jeopardize the health coverage of those who liked what they had. As nonpartisan analysts made clear today, millions of Americans will soon learn the hard way that Washington’s overreach into their health care decisions will result in sharp disruptions to their coverage and their care. The President’s disastrous health care law continues to unravel. To advance bipartisan, patient-centered solutions, the President’s partisan roadblock must be repealed.”
