What’s the Truth About the Cost of the Affordable Care Act?

Paul Krugman of the New York Times editorial staff has accused the Republicans of lying in their recent statements concerning the deficit being produced by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter referred to as the ACA), which is also known as “Obamacare.” He says that the ACA is actually projected to cost about $50 billion less than originally predicted by the Congressional Budget Office. What Mr. Krugman does not report is what follows in this blog post.

Republicans have noted that the ACA is producing a huge federal budget deficit. They have acknowledged, however, that the very recent reevaluation of the deficit by the Congressional Budget Office shows that there is to be a $50 billion deficit decrease over the 10-year period of 2012-2022. http://1.usa.gov/GP62s2

If one will examine the last line of table 1 in the above link, he will note that the projected budget deficit will, indeed, decrease by $48 billion over the next 10 years. However, this “decrease” is not a decrease in the total deficit, but it is a decrease in the rate of INCREASE of the projected deficit. The ACA will finally be accompanied by a total increase in the national federal debt by a little more than $1trillion according to the report by the Congressional Budget Office.

Americans were told by President Obama that this ACA would not cost us any money, because the costs incurred would be offset by savings in general medical costs and revenues received as a result of payment of penalties from those who opted not to buy the insurance.

I think that if we are to look for someone who has lied about the cost of the ACA, we should look to some place other than the conservative Republicans.