Spending estimates for insurance subsidies under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act increased $111 billion from a year ago. The Republican chairman of the U.S. House tax-writing committee questioned the increase.
President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget request projected that subsidies for low-income and working-class families would total $478 billion through 2021. Last year, the administration pegged the cost at $367 billion over the same period.
The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Republican Dave Camp of Michigan, asked the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Kathleen Sebelius, to explain the change. Sebelius said the estimate appears in the Treasury Department’s budget.
Camp followed up with a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The increase “cannot be explained by legislative changes or new economic assumptions, and therefore must reflect substantial changes in underlying assumptions” about the way the subsidies would work, Camp wrote. He asked whether the administration believes insurance premiums would be more expensive than earlier predictions, or if more workers would lose coverage through their employers than expected.
Obama’s 2013 budget more than offsets the higher cost of insurance subsidies with lower spending on Medicaid, the U.S. health program for the poor. Medicaid is projected to spend $3.6 trillion, or $275 billion less than in 2012. Read more