Congressional Budget Office

May 14, 2013

CBO’s Estimate of the Net Budgetary Impact of the Affordable Care Act’s Health Insurance Coverage Provisions Has Not Changed Much Over Time

Proposed regulations recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of the Treasury expanded the number of people who will be exempt from paying a penalty for being uninsured relative to our previous expectations. CBO and JCT now expect that, as a result of those regulations, between 500,000 and 1 million fewer people will obtain health insurance coverage each year. In our current projections for 2023, the ACA reduces the number of people without health insurance by 25 million, leaving 31 million uninsured (compared with 30 million in our February estimate).

Comment:  After the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented ten years from now, the number of people who will remain uninsured is estimated to be 31 million. Since there will be a net gain of 25 million with insurance, that means that Obamacare - a plan to cover everyone - will have been only 45 percent effective in the goal of reducing the net number of uninsured. Pretty lousy.

This result on the uninsured will put us just about where we were when the Clintons began their effort to achieve universal coverage. It was a crisis then, and it will still be a crisis after we've expended far too much money and time on this terribly flawed effort.

Forget repeal, REPLACE!