President’s Health Law Two Years Later: Health Care Costs Are Worse

Higher Costs, Higher Taxes, More Debt, More Spending

WASHINGTON – Leading up to the two-year anniversary of the enactment of the President’s unconstitutional, health spending law, U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) today released a fact sheet outlining how the law will increase costs – with higher health insurance premiums, greater government spending, more debt and higher taxes – on the American people.  Hatch and Enzi are respectively the Ranking Members of the Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committees.

1. $2.6 trillion in new federal spending when fully implemented. (Senate Budget Committee analysis of Congressional Budget Office score of PPACA, March 10, 2010)

2. $701 billion increase to the deficit in the first ten years of the health spending law (Report by the House Budget Committee, “The Budget Record of the 111th Congress: More Spending, Taxes, Deficits and Debt,” September 29, 2010)

3. $2,100 increase in premiums for families buying insurance on their own due to the health spending law (Letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Senator Evan Bayh regarding health care premiums, November 30, 2009)

4. $500+ billion increase in taxes that will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for patients, lower wages for employees, and fewer jobs in the economy (Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, March 20, 2010 and the Joint Committee on Taxation, March, 20 2010)

5. $118 billion in new costs imposed on states for the health spending law’s Medicaid expansions—budgetary costs that will crowd out other state programs like education or law enforcement
(Joint Report by the Senate Finance Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee, Medicaid Expansion in the New Health Law: Costs To The States, March 1, 2011)6. $311 billion projected increase in health costs due to the health spending law (Report from Richard S. Foster, Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, April 22, 2010)

7. 10.7 percent increase in prescription drug spending in 2014 (5.1 percent higher than without the health spending law) (“National Health Spending Projections Through 2020: Economic Recovery And Reform Drive Faster Spending Growth,” Health Affairs, July 28, 2011)

8. 8.9 percent increase in physician and clinical services in 2014
(3.1 percent higher than without the health spending law) (“National Health Spending Projections Through 2020: Economic Recovery And Reform Drive Faster Spending Growth,” Health Affairs, July 28, 2011)

9. 7.2 percent increase in hospital spending in 2014 (1.0 percent higher than without the health spending law) (“National Health Spending Projections Through 2020: Economic Recovery And Reform Drive Faster Spending Growth,” Health Affairs, July 28, 2011)

10. $350 - $400 increase in premiums as a result of the new tax on health insurance plans under the health spending law (Letter to Senator Jon Kyl from the Joint Committee on Taxation, June 3, 2011)

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