Source: Weekly Standard

Remember back when the Democrats tried to sell Obamacare to a skeptical citizenry as health care “reform” that would cost “only” $848 billion—far less than a trillion—over a decade?  Indeed, that was the alleged 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions, according to the Congressional Budget Office (see Table 3), when Harry Reid, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Al Franken, Mark Udall, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Begich, Mark Warner, and the rest of the Democrats rammed President Obama’s signature legislation through the Senate on Christmas Eve without a single Republican vote.  That 12-digit price-tag was widely cited by the New York Times and other sympathetic outlets, who treated it as gospel, even as conservatives observed that it was clearly a sham number.

Well, now the CBO is out with a new report on Obamacare’s costs, and—sure enough—its 10-year price-tag now eclipses $2 trillion.  To be more exact, the CBO now projects (see Table B-1) that the 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions will be a cool $2,004,000,000,000.00.

And what will all of that taxpayer money—funneling to Washington, D.C. or to compliant insurance companies—buy?  Well, back in 2009, we were told that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 31 million people, leaving just 24 million without insurance (see Table 3).  Now those numbers have essentially flipped around, as we’re now told that it will reduce the number of uninsured by just 25 million, leaving 31 million uninsured (see Table B-2).  That’s what Obama calls “universal coverage.”

So, let’s do the math on that:  In 2009, we were told it would cost $848 billion to insure 31 million people.  That’s $27,000 per newly insured person.  Now we’re told it will cost $2.004 trillion to insure 25 million people.  That’s $80,000 per newly insured person—about a three-fold increase since passage.

It would have been fun to watch the Democrats try to sell a $2 trillion overhaul of American medicine that will result in most of the uninsured remaining uninsured.  And it will be fun to watch them try to defend it over the next nine months.