On March 22, 2024, Paragon’s research paper “The Shortcomings of The ACA Exchange” was referenced in Forbes article “The Affordable Care Act Has Not Been Affordable For Taxpayers.”
From the article:
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, turns 14 this Saturday. Its proponents claimed the ACA would lower costs and make health care more affordable. But after 14 years the data tell a different story.
Former President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law on March 23rd, 2010. His administration wanted to make health care “a right for every American”, and in typical government fashion that meant spending a lot of taxpayer money. The ACA’s subsidies have obscured the program’s true costs, and its impact on insurance coverage has fallen short of projections.
A study from Paragon Health Institute shows that while 19 million additional people got health insurance coverage after the ACA went into effect, only about 2 million got private insurance. The remaining 17 million were covered under the act’s Medicaid expansion provisions. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initially projected that the ACA would increase coverage by 25 million people, evenly split between private coverage and Medicaid expansion. However, as shown in the figure below, the percentage of people with private insurance coverage (blue line) has been flat.
