From a new piece I have over at Kaiser Health News:
But even if all of the offsets work out as planned, which is not likely, the House and Senate bills would still create substantial budgetary risks because of the pressures for entitlement expansion they would unleash.
Both bills assume the new entitlement spending can be held down with the so-called “firewall” provisions. These are the rules that essentially preclude individuals from gaining access to premium subsidies available in the exchanges. If an employer offers “qualified” insurance coverage to a worker, the employee really has no choice but to take it if he wants to avoid paying the penalty for going uninsured. But these rules would create large disparities in the federal subsidies made available to workers inside and outside the exchanges.
Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute has calculated that, under the Senate bill, a family of four with an income of $60,000 with employer-sponsored health care would get $4,500 less in federal support outside of the exchange than a similar family inside the exchange would get in 2016. And there would be many tens of millions more families outside the exchange than in it, according to CBO. Today, there are about 127 million Americans under the age of 65 with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line, but CBO expects only about 18 million people will be getting exchange subsidies in 2016.
If enacted as currently written, it’s entirely predictable what would happen next. Pressure would build to treat all Americans fairly, regardless of where they get their insurance. One way or another, the subsidies provided to those in the exchanges would be made more widely available, driving the costs of reform well above the $900 billion limit the administration has set for the initiative.
You can read the whole thing here.