Health officials and consumer advocates are warning that Obamacare will make it even harder for Americans to afford health insurance coverage, including through private plans.
The Obama administration is pushing the repeal of Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the program for low-income Americans to pay for insurance that provides coverage to more people than private insurers.
That would create a massive financial burden for Americans.
But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicaid expansion would cost $8.6 trillion over a decade.
That’s the cost of covering more than 23 million people for an additional year, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
The CBO estimate is based on a number of assumptions, including the expansion’s ability to provide coverage to everyone who qualified for it, as well as the fact that the cost to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance will fall under the law.
But experts say the estimates are likely to be conservative.
In a new report, Health Policy Analysis Group, an advocacy group, estimated that the Medicaid expansion will increase premiums for millions of people.
That could mean that millions of Americans who are eligible for Medicaid but can’t afford insurance through private insurers are more likely to pay the higher cost of coverage.
In this video, Robert Samuelson, an economics professor at George Mason University, explains the Medicaid effect.
