Stunning Finding: President's Health Law Creates $17 Trillion In Unfunded Financial Obligations

WASHINGTON, March 29--On the Senate floor today, Ranking Member Sessions announced that a new Budget Committee analysis has found that the long-term, unfunded liabilities associated with President Obama's health care law will reach $17 trillion. The Committee's analysis is based on the Obama Administration's own numbers as well as those from the Congressional Budget Office. It is a modest, conservative estimate and yet is still more than double that of Social Security.

At a "bipartisan fiscal responsibility summit" in 2009, President Obama's then-OMB Director, Peter Orszag, stated: "To my fellow budget hawks in this room and in the rest of the country, let me be very clear: Health care reform is entitlement reform. The path to fiscal responsibility must run directly through health care." But despite this emphatic statement, the nation's unfunded liabilities--money we must spend but for which there is no source of funds set aside--increased from $65 trillion to $82 trillion since the health law was passed.

To view a graph depicting the increase in unfunded obligations brought on by the law, please click here: http://1.usa.gov/H4Lk66.

• Category

  News & Politics

[Jordan West]

Obama is the result of uneducated Americans voting.

[CEMF100]

Costs are not "corporate republican propaganda", they are facts and can be checked. Someone is susceptible to propaganda here and I suspect it is not the folks with the objective numbers. Numbers that, I say again, can be checked. Please do so.

[welderkid123]

@xadam2dudex dude the deficit has skyrocketed since obama took office, there is no way NO way this can not add to the deficit, we are going to add millions more to a healthcare system, mind you without adding any doctors, the medical field is one of the most expensive in the world and you're going to tell me its not gonna add any debt?

[MrCrixmadine2]

Why are we letting the government tell us what we have to do? Especially when they are suppose to work for us

[futanflqb]

im pretty sure they stopped counting votes years ago

[Jere616]

Once they get past "billions" my eyes glaze over. They should just use the word "Gazillion."

[MrAmericanidiot1995]

@plmnko55pwn just look at xadam2dudex's comment and you will have proof to your point.

[sitycatt]

That's the plan man.

[xadam2dudex]

what a bunch of right wing lies ..what is wrong with u people ?? u believe all the corporate republican propaganda.. don't u have 2 brain cells to understand reality ??

[dnno1]

The period of time is 75 years and the $17 trillion is the difference between what would have happened before the Affordable Care Act passed and after (i.e. the difference between $65T and $82T). $82 trillion over 75 years amounts to a little over $1 trillion a year. Now in comparison, According to the Kaiser Foundation, the total health care spending in the US was $2.6 trillion (of which 40% was from the govt.). If you think about it of course you are going to spend more with more insured.