SLIDESHOW: Obamacare’s Impact—in Pictures

Alyene Senger / October 11, 2012

As health care becomes an increasingly debated topic, it is critically important for every American to understand the impact of Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation’s newly updated “Obamacare in Pictures: Visualizing the Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” shows through charts and graphs Obamacare’s far-reaching negative effects on all Americans. (continues below slideshow)

Here are a few examples of what the chart series depicts:

• Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare. Obamacare cut $716 billion out of the Medicare program to pay for new spending in Obamacare. These cuts come from Medicare Advantage, hospice services, nursing homes, and more. Taking this money out of Medicare will have serious implications on seniors’ ability to access care. For instance, the Medicare Actuary predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of the seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage—7.4 million—will have to leave their private plans and move into traditional Medicare—which offers less generous benefits, no cap on catastrophic costs, and separate plans for drug coverage.
• 18 new taxes and penalties. Obamacare includes 18 new taxes and penalties that will cost Americans $836 billion by 2022. Many of these will fall heavily on the middle class, including the much debated individual mandate tax. Nearly 70 percent of those responsible for paying the individual mandate tax will have incomes below 400 percent of the federal poverty level, even a family of four making less than $24,600 a year in 2016 could be subject to this egregious tax.
• The states’ cost of a Medicaid expansion. The Obama Administration is pushing states to expand their Medicaid programs to the new Obamacare level. This graphic shows how much an expansion is likely to cost each state—and it certainly isn’t “free.”
• Premiums continue to rise. One of the boldest promises President Obama made when advocating his health care law was that premiums would significantly drop for American families. Thus far, that hasn’t happened. Premiums have increased by almost $2,000 for families with employer-sponsored coverage over the last two years.
• 30 million Americans will remain uninsured. Obamacare’s main provisions expand health coverage by increasing enrollment in Medicaid and offering subsidies in the new government exchanges. Despite spending $1.68 trillion on these coverage expansion provisions over the next 10 years, Obamacare leaves 30 million Americans uninsured in 2022.