Yesterday, I posted a detailed explanation of how Obamacare would index vouchers provided through the state exchanges. This was a follow-up to my original column on this and other subjects from last week.
But, detailed though yesterday’s post was, there’s still more to this story.
To recap from the beginning: The president and his allies have been attacking House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan for indexing, on an annual basis, the “premium support credits” provided to future program entrants to the consumer price index (CPI).
These attacks seemed more than a little hypocritical to me. After all, didn’t Obamacare do exactly the same thing? Section 1401 of the law requires the “premium credits,” or vouchers, provided through the state exchanges to be adjusted in the years after 2018 “to reflect the excess (if any) of the rate of premium growth … over the rate of growth in the consumer price index.” That would seem to mean that beneficiaries getting insurance through the exchanges would pay for cost growth above the CPI, and the government’s contribution toward the premium would grow with the CPI. Further, this adjustment is only to occur in years when the aggregate cost of the premium credits and cost-sharing subsidies in the exchanges exceed 0.504 percent of GDP.
It turns out, however, that the law is written so poorly and ambiguously that other conclusions might be reached about what the words of the law actually mean. That seems to be the case with the Congressional Budget Office, as its cost projections for premium credits in the exchanges grow at a rate above the CPI in the years after 2018, even though CBO believes that aggregate spending will exceed that threshold of 0.504 percent of GDP.
So, as I explained yesterday, it would appear that CBO is assuming a different adjustment is applied, which would have the effect of scaling back the government’s contribution below health-cost growth — and for some people, even below CPI growth — but on average somewhat above it.
But what about the actuaries who run the numbers for the administration? How do they see things?
First, they expect that the aggregate-spending condition won’t be met. In other words, the CPI-based adjustment to the premium credits doesn’t become operative in their projections because they see spending on the credits and cost-sharing subsidies coming in below 0.504 percent of GDP. After 2018, they assume the effect of this threshold will be to index the government’s contributions toward premiums to GDP growth.
But what would happen if their cost projections are wrong and aggregate spending did exceed 0.504 percent of GDP?
If that were to occur, they believe the law would require indexation of the vouchers provided by the government in the exchanges to the CPI — the exact same policy that is under so much attack in the Ryan plan. And, let’s be clear, it wouldn’t take much of an adjustment in cost projections for the actuaries to assume this indexing provision will go into effect in 2019 and future years.
So, yes, those who are attacking the Ryan Medicare plan have a serious problem. They, starting with the president, have made a huge political issue of how that plan indexes the government’s contribution for Medicare coverage. But their own experts believe Obamacare, under certain conditions, does exactly the same thing.
[Cross-posted on Critical Condition]