Health insurance subsidies are expected to cost the federal government about $660 billion in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Much of the $136 billion in extra health spending stems from “significantly higher” enrollment in Medicaid, the federal health program for low-income people, according to the CBO’s latest annual report on healthcare spending. The estimates do not include spending on people over the age of 65.
The CBO figures also show an 11 percent increase in the cost of ObamaCare subsidies.
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When federal lawmakers wrote the act overhauling the nation’s health-care system six years ago, they ruled out any possibility of extending health insurance to illegal immigrants.
Local officials where many of those immigrants live are treating them anyway.
A Wall Street Journal survey of the 25 U.S. counties with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations found that 20 of them have programs that pay for the low-income uninsured to have doctor visits, shots, prescription drugs, lab tests and surgeries at local providers. The services usually are inexpensive or free to participants, who must prove they live in the county but are told their immigration status doesn’t matter.
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Expanded health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislative legacy, will cost the government more, according to an official study released Thursday. Still, on balance, the measure more than pays for itself.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the health care law will cost $1.34 trillion over the coming decade, $136 billion more than the CBO predicted a year ago. That 11 percent hike is mostly caused by higher-than-expected enrollment in the expanded Medicaid program established under the law.
All told, 22 million more people will have health care coverage this year than if the law had never been enacted, CBO said. The measure’s coverage provisions are expected to cost $110 billion this year.
Federal officials have been lucky until now, but the Affordable Care Act’s Internet web portal could become a hacker’s playground — with plenty of sensitive data compromised — without a significant tightening of security, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
The new warning comes on the sixth anniversary of the enactment of the ACA and addresses security problems related to the personal information — including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and sensitive income and tax details — of literally millions of Americans who have enrolled in the insurance program online through HealthCare.gov.
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Birthdays usually represent a time for celebration. But when it comes to Obamacare’s sixth birthday, partying is the last thing on Arizonans’ minds.
Six years after the so-called Affordable Care Act was signed into law, President Obama’s litany of failed promises continue to add up. Despite all his assurances, Americans who liked their health care plans couldn’t keep them, premiums have gone up – not down – and taxes continue to multiply.
That’s why it is no surprise that a February poll by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found only 15 percent of people say that they have personally benefited from Obamacare, while 25 percent allege they have been personally harmed by the law.
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