Then there is the higher cost to taxpayers. The CBO's initial estimate in March 2010 of ObamaCare's budget impact showed it saving money, reducing the federal deficit by $143 billion in the first 10 years. But that positive estimate was largely the product of gimmicks inserted into the bill by Democratic leaders to hide the law's true cost.
Sure enough, the administration last October announced it would not implement one of those gimmicks, a long-term care program called the Class Act, because it was financially unworkable. The loss of the premiums that would be collected to finance the Class Act wiped out $70 billion of the supposed deficit reduction projected by CBO. And last month the administration's proposed fiscal 2013 budget included $111 billion in additional spending for the premium subsidies in the health law's insurance exchanges—further eroding any confidence in the original ObamaCare projections.
The CBO is still saying it is way too early to determine that employers will drop employee coverage because it is cheaper to pay the fine levied by ObamaCare. Isn't that just like a government agency: no an ounce of common sense. The question: why would an employer keep insuring employees when it is cheaper and a far less hassle not to? Only the government would have to think about that one:
In reality, as government assumes a greater share of health-care costs, pressure to cut payments to providers will be enormous. Reduced government reimbursements to providers will cause massive cost-shifting to those remaining in the private health-insurance market. More employees will lose coverage. Before long, we will have what the left has long sought—a single payer health-care system modeled after Medicaid.
In 2014, a new tax hits every health insurer and every State Medicaid managed care program. Your State pays the managed care provider, if they choose managed care. That payment will increase and your State will be far poorer than it is today.
A recent Milliman study estimates that the Obamacare health insurer fee “will increase Medicaid managed care premiums between 1.5% and 1.6% on a nationwide basis, with some states expected to see increased premiums of up to 2.5%.” Milliman projects that the fee will collect $8 billion the first year and eventually grow to $14.3 billion in 2018, indexed to the rate of premium growth thereafter. All of the tax revenue will accrue to the federal government.
On the low end, if every state uses managed care (which they do not), the cost will be and additional $1.6 BILLION for every state, for the first year. Where does that money come from? It WILL come from your taxes. Count on it.
Disaster is on the way to America from so many avenues it is incomprehensible. Really. I don't think we can come close to how ObamaCare will cripple our economy, our family fiances and destroy the quality of our healthcare. Whomever the Republican candidate is, we must vote for him.