The New Media Journal | Reid Healthcare Bill to Cost $196 Billion a Year, Leave 24 Million Uninsured

The New Media Journal | Reid Healthcare Bill to Cost $196 Billion a Year, Leave 24 Million Uninsured: "Under the health care bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Wednesday, by 2019 taxpayers will be paying $196 billion per year to subsidize other people’s health insurance coverage, but there still will be 24 million uninsured people in America, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Reid’s proposal mandates that all individuals legally resident in the United States purchase health insurance and offers subsidies to people making up to 400 percent of the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) to purchase insurance as long as they buy a federally regulated and approved plan sold in a federally regulated insurance exchange.

According to an analysis published Wednesday by the CBO and JCT, this subsidy will cost taxpayers $196 billion per year by 2019 but will still leave 24 million people uninsured in America, about 8 million of whom will be illegal aliens. The estimate assumes that there would otherwise be about 55 million uninsured people in the United States.

'The gross cost of the coverage expansions, consisting of exchange subsidies, the net costs of expanded eligibility for Medicaid, and tax credits for employers: Those provisions have an estimated cost of $196 billion in 2019, and that cost is growing at about 8 percent per year toward the end of the 10-year budget window. As a rough approximation, CBO assumes continued growth at about that rate during the following decade,' says the joint CBO and JCT analysis.

“By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would be reduced by about 31 million, leaving about 24 million nonelderly residents uninsured (about one-third of whom would be unauthorized immigrants),” says the CBO and JCT analysis.

Table 3 in the report indicates that when the health-insurance mandate and subsidy program becomes fully operational in 2014 there will be 35 million uninsured in the United States and this number will drop to 23 million by 2018 before rising back to 24 million in 2019. The report does not indicate how many uninsured people will remain after 2019, or whether the upward trend between 2018 and 2019 will continue."