The Republican Party has one plan—cutting taxes on the richest one percent of the country at the expense of every single government-funded program except defense. After failing miserably to pass through their hastily thrown together (over seven years) ACHA, the new move is to do what Republicans to best—make it worse. But, like most Republican plans don’t fret about them, it’s everybody else that gets screwed.
The U.S. government's costs could increase by $2.3 billion in 2018 if Congress and President Donald Trump decide not to fund Obamacare-related payments to health insurers, according to a study released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The scary thing here is that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Republican Party could believably pretend they’ve done something good while screwing people trying to get health insurance.
We estimate that the increased cost to the federal government of higher premium tax credits would actually be 23% more than the savings from eliminating cost-sharing reduction payments. For fiscal year 2018, that would result in a net increase in federal costs of $2.3 billion. Extrapolating to the 10-year budget window (2018-2027) using CBO’s projection of CSR payments, the federal government would end up spending $31 billion more if the payments end.
Kaiser says that the government could say that it saved $10 billion up front, while really passing off costs to a later date when we as tax payers would foot the increased bill—a bill that they are trying to cut up front costs in order to justify the fact that wealthier Americans won’t have to pay their fair share of the burdens. All of these numbers from KFF are dependent on insurance companies staying in the market after the government promises not to subsidize their insurance plans, which is another hope the Republican Party has in its attempts to paint the Affordable Care Act as a failure.