I have a new issue brief at the Heritage Foundation on the CBO’s updated cost estimate for Obamacare after the recent Supreme Court decision, and what CBO’s assessment leaves out.
CBO now projects that Obamacare’s Medicare and Medicaid cuts will reduce federal spending by over $700 billion over the coming decade. (Most of the cuts come from Medicare, although CBO did not break the estimate down by program.) However, these cuts are being double-counted. The cuts are being used to replenish the Medicare trust fund for hospital and other institutional care and pay future Medicare claims. Over the next 75 years, this will add about $8 trillion to the government’s unfunded liabilities. Over the next decade, when the double-counted cuts are taken out of the equation, Obamacare adds at least $340 billion to projected budget deficits.
You can read the rest of the brief here.