The Cost of Obamacare

Obamacare has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket. It has caused millions of Americans who liked their health plans to lose their health plans. It has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamacare exchanges in Alabama and Alaska will each have one—that's right, one—insurer offering plans. We're moving toward "single insurer" health care.

In short, Obamacare is wrecking the private health insurance market.

So what are Americans getting in return? Obamacare's proponents say the overhaul has greatly increased the number of people with health insurance coverage (albeit by less than three-quarters as much as it was supposed to have done by this time). What they tend to omit is the fact that most of the "newly insured"—about 60 percent—have merely been dumped into Medicaid. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare has added only 8 million people—just 2.5 percent of the U.S. population—to the private insurance rolls.

And at what cost? Well, the CBO says that the Obamacare subsidies for private insurance will cost $43 billion this year alone. That's an average of $5,375 per person for those who have been added to the private insurance rolls—or $21,500 per family of four. Meanwhile, the typical 36-year-old (or younger) who makes $36,000 a year (or more) gets $0 under Obamacare. Such everyday Americans instead get to help finance that $5,375-per-person cost for those who get private insurance under Obamacare, while facing far higher premiums and significantly narrower doctor networks themselves.

As for those who Obamacare has newly enrolled in Medicaid, they are costing taxpayers even more—an average of $5,692 per person for this year alone ($74 billion divided by 13 million new enrollees).