"When the Democrats' health care bill was signed into law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that it would increase spending on Medicaid and taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies by $938 billion between 2010 and 2019. However, as Republicans repeatedly pointed out, this actually hid the true costs of the health care law, because the Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchange subsidies are not scheduled to begin until 2014, five years into CBO's mandated 10-year budget window.  Today, CBO released updated information which predicts the Democrats' health care overhaul will actually cost nearly $1.8 trillion between 2012 and 2022, CBO's new budget window. Once the Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies are fully in place, the Democrats' health care law is certain to top more than $2 trillion. Americans were right to be concerned that the country cannot afford the Democrats' risky experiment – it can't."

“This new estimate shows that the health care law is rapidly increasing Medicaid spending, because it is forcing many more Americans into this mismanaged, government run health program. The CBO analysis is one more example of the President breaking his promise that Americans can keep their insurance if they like it. According to CBO, 4 million fewer people will have access to employer health insurance under this new law.”

“This analysis exposes more of the real costs of the President’s unconstitutional, deeply-flawed health spending law. According to CBO, the costs to taxpayers may be an astonishing $2.13 trillion through 2022 alone. While President Obama promised that ‘If you like what you have, you can keep it,’ CBO found that as many as 20 million could lose their employer-sponsored health benefits and 49 million more Americans could become dependent on government-sponsored health care. This law keeps getting worse and worse; it needs to be repealed."

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According to this article, the federal government may have intentionally hidden the true cost of the public. Read more here.

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According to a new Weekly Standard article, 4.5 million Americans have lost their health care insurance since ObamaCare became law. This has occurred despite the President's promise that if you like your health insurance you can keep it.

As the article points out, the Congressional Budget Office had predicted that nearly 6 million more Americans would have health insurance in 2011 than in 2010 - including 3 million more people as a result of ObamaCare. So the Washington beancounters are off by a net total of 10.5 million people.

Read the full Weekly Standard article here.

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Testimony this week before a House subcommittee revealed that ObamaCare's exchange subsidies will not be made available to many Americans. The Washington Examiner reported that Richard Burkhauser, a Cornell University economics professor, testified that under ObamaCare: (1) employers are required to provide insurance to their employees or pay a fine (tax); (2) the employer mandate does not require employers to provide coverage to their employee's dependents; and (3) that if one family member has employer-provided coverage the whole household becomes ineligible for subsidies offered through the state-based exchanges. What does this mean for a low income worker who has employer provided coverage? They will have to buy insurance on the individual market to insure their family.  Thanks to the increase in premiums that are a result of ObamaCare, the cost for insurance could cost a family of four making $28,000 per year as much as 43% of their income.  ObamaCare does not make the American families concerns over insurance costs better, in a lot of cases it will make those concerns worse.

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The Obama Administration is finally publicly admitting what critics of ObamaCare have known about the CLASS Act (the new long-term care entitlement program created in ObamaCare) prior to ObamaCare passing Congress - that the program was completely unsustainable.

On October 14, 2011, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius notified Congress that the there was no "viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time." She also indicated that the program would be suspended indefinitely.

The Congressional Budget Office had originally advised Congress that the CLASS Act would increase federal revenue by $86 billion from 2012 to 2021 (critics correctly called this a budget gimmick in ObamaCare because this provision would collect revenue in the short term while the major costs of the CLASS Act would occur in the out years).  With the suspension of the CLASS Act, ObamaCare will lose that "revenue" that helped give ObamaCare the appearance that the law was budget neutral.  

This comes on the heals of Congress repealing ObamaCare's 1099 reporting provision that was also supposed to produce $17 billion in revenue over 10 years.  As a result, ObamaCare has lost $103 billion in revenue over the past 18 months and the law is not even scheduled to take effect for another 27 months. This shows that the financial footing of ObamaCare will not be budget neutral and makes it even more imperative that Congress repeal the law.

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Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) has introduced a bill to close one of ObamaCare's loopholes that allows early retirees with high incomes to enroll in Medicaid at the expense of federal and state loopholes.  Enzi has introduced a bill to close that loophole - according to Enzi's press release, his bill will save the taxpayers $13 billion.

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