US Will Dump $700-Billion into Obamacare Subsidies in 2018
May 30, 2018 in News by RBN Staff
Source: Need To Know
While Democrats have continuously griped about how Republican measures to slowly dismantle the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) will sink their chances of cementing control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections, the US government is now estimating that it will spend $700 billion on subsidies this year to help provide Americans under the age of 65 with health insurance through their jobs or in government-sponsored health programs, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The subsidies come from four main categories:
Roughly $300 billion is federal spending on programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which typically help insure low-income people.
Almost as big are the tax write-offs that employers take for providing coverage to their workers.
Medicare-eligible people, such as the disabled, account for $82 billion.
Subsidies for Obamacare and for other individual coverage are the smallest segment, at $55 billion.
While Obamacare initially added tens of millions of Americans to the rolls of the insured, 29 million people will likely go without health coverage for an average of at least one month this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
