Health Care Costs

[USNBandit]

You bring up a very good point. The ACA uses ten years of increased taxes to pay for 5years of coverage. In addition, when they say that the ACA is paid for by those taxes and penalties they only mean a finite number of people.

The way I understand the ACA, taxes+penalties+money pulled from Medicare=the funds required to pay the subsidies to make the insurance "affordable".

Here is why I don't think this will work. If we take a huge drag on the Obama crack pipe and assume the tax revenue and Medicare savings come out as planned then the rest of the subsidies are paid for by penalties. When the number of people needing this coverage increases only the penalty revenue increases. That is a fraction of the amount needed to cover the subsidy. Assuming today's rates for federal government employee coverage and the projected subsidy for a family of 4, the penalty from one employer will only cover 40% of the subsidy. The other 60% isn't budgeted for. Remember this is budgeted for 10 years of revenue to cover 5 years of benefits. At the end of the first 10 years the costs effectively double.

It is doomed to failure and that was the plan all along.