Obamacare Spending ‘Explodes’ Under Democrats

Christopher Jacobs writes for the Federalist about the current impact of the poorly named Affordable Care Act.

Lest anyone think the gusher of federal spending ended with the Covid pandemic, a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) demonstrates otherwise. The analysis shows the true motivation behind the supposedly “temporary” programs the Biden administration and Democrats enacted in 2021-2022: to expand the welfare state even further.

As a result of these efforts, CBO believes that spending on Obamacare subsidies will more than double over the coming decade. It’s the latest data point showing why the increased subsidies Democrats passed in 2021-2022 should be allowed to expire at the end of next year rather than be made permanent, as Democrats prefer.

In written responses to questions for the record from a July hearing of the Senate Budget Committee, CBO analyzed the increase in projected Obamacare subsidy spending. Four short years ago, in September 2020, CBO estimated that said spending would total $637 billion over a decade (2021-2030). As of this June, the budget office now believes subsidy spending will total $1.316 trillion in the coming decade (2025-2034) — a 107 percent increase in their estimates.

CBO noted that some of the increase comes from changes in the “budgetary window” — that is, the more recent estimates project four years further out in the future and therefore include a higher inflation factor. But CBO admitted that the higher estimates “are primarily driven by larger projections of enrollment” on insurance Exchanges.

Some of the higher estimated spending comes from the expanded subsidies, which increased enrollment and increased subsidies for those who do enroll. But, as noted above, those subsidies will expire at the end of next year under current law.

Yet even if the increased subsidies expire in December 2025, which CBO must assume when formulating its baseline estimates of fiscal policy, the budget office believes spending will still remain elevated compared to its estimates from four years ago.