The Congressional Budget Office this week reduced its estimate of how many people would sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces, even as federal spending on healthcare topped Social Security spending for the first time in history.
In its annual report on the budget and economic outlook for the country, the CBO revised its previous estimate of 21 million enrollees to 13 million – a drop of more than 61%. The agency also said that the federal budget deficit for the current fiscal year would increase in relation to the size of the economy for the first time since 2009.
This announcement comes as spending on federal healthcare programs outpaced spending on Social Security for the first time.
According to the same CBO report, the government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies stemming from the Affordable Care Act. That’s an increase of 13% from 2014, and it was enough to outstrip spending on Social Security, which totaled $882 billion last year.
The Obama administration cast the numbers in a positive light, however, saying enrollment in health plans was lower than expected thanks to private employers that chose to maintain coverage for their workers. Because fewer employers dropped coverage than expected, the administration said, fewer people sought insurance in the exchanges.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of Health and Human Services, added that she expects 10 million people to be signed up and paying premiums by the end of the year. The HHS said last week that 8.8 million people had selected health plans or been automatically re-enrolled through the federal exchange with another 2.7 million in state exchanges.
The CBO estimated that 9.5 million people, on average, were enrolled in coverage through the public marketplaces in any given month in 2015 and that 8 million of them received subsidies.
It also issued a wider warning on mandatory spending programs and their growing share of the federal budget. Spending on these programs rose 9.5% to $200 billion in 2015, almost double the average annual rate of increase of 5.4% during the previous decade.
The 200-page budget summary also offered a detailed look at unemployment, which it expects to decrease from 5% to 4.5% in 2016.
