Did Liberals Admit Obamacare Will Increase the Deficit?
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities released a report earlier this week that shed some interesting light on Obamacare’s claims of deficit reduction. The report spends nearly 20 pages attacking Medicare premium support proposals for creating a “two-tier health care system,” because in CBPP’s view the inflation adjustments in such proposals would not keep up with rising health costs. Conversely, the report claims that under Obamacare, “the premium credits that low- and moderate-income families will receive to help buy coverage through the new health insurance exchanges are designed to keep pace with health insurance costs, at least for the first five years.” That sentence is followed by this doozy of a footnote:
Starting in 2019, the growth in premium credits is limited if premiums grow faster than the CPI. Congress enacted this provision as part of the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 in order to hold down the cost of health reform in later decades, but many analysts believe that it will eventually have to be modified.
In other words, the liberal CBPP cites as conventional wisdom the belief that Obamacare’s premium subsidies will have to be increased even further – thus reducing, or likely eliminating entirely, all of the law’s supposed “savings.” CBPP was forced to make this striking admission because the inflation adjustments for premium subsidies in Obamacare are similar, and possibly equal, to the inflation adjustments for Medicare recipients under the House Republican budget’s premium support model. That fact leaves CBPP on the horns of a dilemma, as either:
- Premium subsidies under Obamacare will be inadequate – meaning individuals will be FORCED to buy a policy they cannot afford*; or
- Obamacare will require massive new subsidies ON TOP OF the trillions already approved, destroying the mirage of deficit-neutrality Democrats purport to claim; or
- The inflation adjustments in the House Republican proposal for Medicare are just as sustainable as Obamacare’s premium subsidies, and the left’s attempt to claim otherwise represents scare tactics and political posturing.
As the saying goes, that’s not class warfare. That’s math.
* It’s worth reiterating that Republican proposals for Medicare premium support do NOT involve coercing seniors to buy a product, unlike Obamacare’s constitutionally dubious individual mandate.