Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report

  • Stunning figure comes from Congressional Budget Office report that revised cost estimates for the next 10 years
  • Government will spend $1.993 TRILLION over a decade and take in $643 BILLION in new taxes, penalties and fees related to Obamacare
  • The $1.35 trillion net cost will result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured – a $50,000 price tag per person at best
  • The law will still leave 'between 29 million and 31 million' nonelderly Americans without medical insurance
  • Numbers assume Obamacare insurance exchange enrollment will double between now and 2025 

By David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor For Dailymail.com

Published: | Updated:

It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday.

The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook. 

The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

Pulling that off will cost Uncle Sam about $1.35 trillion – or $50,000 per head.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE REPORT 

THE $2 TRILLION DOLLAR MAN: President Barack Obama was in India on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office reported the federal government's gross costs for a decade of Obamacare will be $1.993 trillion

THE $2 TRILLION DOLLAR MAN: President Barack Obama was in India on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office reported the federal government's gross costs for a decade of Obamacare will be $1.993 trillion

PROMISES: Obama pledged in 2009 during a speech before a joint session of Congress that his health insurance proposal would cost $900 billion over ten years – a far cry short of current numbers

PROMISES: Obama pledged in 2009 during a speech before a joint session of Congress that his health insurance proposal would cost $900 billion over ten years – a far cry short of current numbers

The numbers are daunting: It will take $1.993 trillion, a number that looks like $1,993,000,000,000, to provide insurance subsidies to poor and middle-class Americans, and to pay for a massive expansion of Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) costs.

Offsetting that massive outlay will be $643 billion in new taxes, penalties and fees related to the Obamacare law.

That revenue includes quickly escalating penalties – or 'taxes,' as the U.S. Supreme Court described them – on people who resist Washington's command to buy medical insurance.

It also includes income from a controversial medical device tax, which some Republicans predict will be eliminated in the next two years.

If they're right, Obamacare's per-person cost would be even higher.

President Barack Obama pledged to members of Congress in 2009, as his signature insurance overhaul law was being hotly debated, that 'the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.'

It would be a significant discount if the White House could return to that number today.

PRICEY: The federal government will spend $50,000 for each person recruited to buy insurance or neroll in free Medicaid through the Obamacare exchanges

PRICEY: The federal government will spend $50,000 for each person recruited to buy insurance or neroll in free Medicaid through the Obamacare exchanges

In that same speech, Obama claimed that there were 'more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.'

$900 billion spent on those people would equate to no more than $30,000 each – less than two-thirds of what the CBO now says the program will cost when the dust settles. 

The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, a group of members from both houses of Congress, prepared Monday's report on the overall direction of the federal budget.

They estimated that 'the net costs of the coverage provisions of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] will rise sharply as the effects of the act phase in from 2015 through 2017.'

Those costs will 'rise steadily through 2022' before leveling off for three years, the groups' economists determined. But even at that point, the Obamacare program will cost the governemnt 'about $145 billion' each year.

That number doesn't include the insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health care costs paid by Americans – only the government's role in implementing the law and paying for its guarantees.

And the law will still leave 'between 29 million and 31 million' nonelderly Americans without medical insurance, says the CBO.

 

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