Obamacare Hides $50 Billion in Annual Costs

New research suggests that Obamacare comes with $50 billion in hidden annual costs, reports DailyCaller.com. The plan’s budget apparently does not take into account the insurance costs of workers’ spouses and children, meaning the Treasury could be tapped for hundreds of billions of dollars in the first decade the plan is instituted.

“The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage,” Richard Burkhauser told the Caller. Burkhauser, a Cornell University economist and professor, coauthored a report on the plan published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

These unaccounted costs “will almost certainly add to the deficit, contrary to what the Congressional Budget Office and others have estimated,” Paul Winfree of the Heritage Foundation told the Caller.

The plan’s estimate that 75 percent of workers would remain on employer-backed insurance plans is also much too high, according to Burkhauser, whose research suggests a figure around 35 percent.

“This study shows yet another way that Obamacare’s cost will be much, much higher than supporters led the American people to believe,” said Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute. “Anyone who’s serious about the federal debt should make Obamacare’s trillion-plus dollars of new entitlement spending the first item to put on the chopping block.”