Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released updated cost estimates for some parts of the Affordable Care Act. In this update, CBO projects that net spending on several parts of the health care law are about $50 billion less than it projected last year. That partly reflects CBO’s confirmation of a trend we’ve been following – slower growth in health insurance premiums. CBO said:
“By 2021, premiums are now estimated to be about 8 percent lower than CBO estimated in March 2011. That change reduces the estimated costs of the coverage provisions of the ACA.”
This suggests that taxpayers will save $50 billion more, on net, through 2021 and Americans will pay even less for private insurance than CBO previously projected – which is good news.
It is also important to be clear about what the CBO report does not say.
The CBO update does not provide new estimates of the entire cost of the Affordable Care Act. That’s because the new report looks at how much the government will spend on discrete elements of the new law, but not how much the government will save due to other parts of the law such as efforts to slow Medicare cost growth and reduce fraud.
Fonte: White House