It will cost the federal government \u2013 taxpayers, that is \u2013 $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday.<\/p>\n
The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization\u2019s new ten-year budget outlook.<\/p>\n
The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in \u2018between 24 million and 27 million\u2019 fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect.<\/p>\n
Pulling that off will cost Uncle Sam about $1.35 trillion \u2013 or $50,000 per head.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Health Insurance Program) costs.<\/p>\n
Offsetting that massive outlay will be $643 billion in new taxes, penalties and fees related to the Obamacare law.<\/p>\n
That revenue includes quickly escalating penalties \u2013 or \u2018taxes,\u2019 as the U.S. Supreme Court described them \u2013 on people who resist Washington\u2019s command to buy medical insurance.<\/p>\n
It also includes income from a controversial medical device tax, which some Republicans predict will be eliminated in the next two years.<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re right, Obamacare\u2019s per-person cost would be even higher.<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama pledged to members of Congress in 2009, as his signature insurance overhaul law was being hotly debated, that \u2018the plan I\u2019m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.\u2019<\/p>\n
In that same speech, Obama claimed that there were \u2018more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.\u2019<\/p>\n
$900 billion spent on those people would equate to no more than $30,000 each \u2013 less than two-thirds of what the CBO now says the program will cost when the dust settles.<\/p>\n
The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, a group of members from both houses of Congress, prepared Monday\u2019s report on the overall direction of the federal budget.<\/p>\n
They estimated that \u2018the 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.\u2019<\/p>\n
Those costs will \u2018rise steadily through 2022\u2032 before leveling off for three years, the groups\u2019 economists determined.<\/p>\n
But even at that point, the Obamacare program will cost the governemnt \u2018about $145 billion\u2019 each year.<\/p>\n