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CBO: Approximately 11 Or 12 Million People Would Be Insured Under Public Plan
Good catch from Jacob Goldstein at the Wall Street Journal. According to the Congressional Budget Office, "total enrollment in the public plan would equal about 11 million or 12 million, counting both individually purchased policies and employer-sponsored enrollees."
As Goldstein notes, "That's about 4% of the current U.S. population, and seems rather small in comparison to how much attention the debate over the public plan has drawn."
Quite right. Obviously these estimates have fairly significant margins of error, but keep this in mind next time you hear public option foes warn that over 100 million Americans would be moved on to government run insurance.
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Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Well, I can understand why it's still a hot issue. The idea will be to offer it to more people over time and eventually everyone.
July 15, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
How many more would enroll in the public plan, but won't be allowed to because of the arbitrary politics-driven restrictions written into the House bill? Media reports are not making clear that (under this proposal), the public option will be available only to a small minority of Americans in the first two years -- and perhaps much longer.
July 15, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not bad, but how does it then cost one trillion over 10 years? That comes out to $10,000/person/year, which is pricy considering people do actually _pay_ for these plans.
July 15, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like fuzzy math to me. That $1T is probably not jut to cover 10 million ppl. The plan allows for 30+ million ppl to get health insurance.
I do agree, where's all the money going. We don't not much yet.
July 15, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
The bulk of the money goes to subsidizing all health insurance purchased made by people with incomes under 400 percent of the Federal poverty level. Most of those subsidized plans will be through private insurance companies (though even more heavily regulated than they are already). Only a small percentage goes to subsidies for people on the public plan.
July 15, 2009 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wolf in sheeps clothing. Hopefully no Repub reads this but if you read the bill it systemically opens up over time. At first the PO is only for small businesses with less than 10 employees and the uninsured. Then over time it is for larger businesses, then it's for the largest businesses and an expanded population. Chess folks, we play chess over here.
July 15, 2009 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. There's no way it stays at 4 percent, but lets make the argument as long as we need to.
July 15, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Read the bill folks. It's explained in the summary.
July 15, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's funny is they say it only covers 10 mill people but will end up saving us a cool 150 bill. With expanded coverage(which we should fight for) we know how this one would turn out.
July 15, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink