President Joseph Biden’s recent decision to offer ObamaCare to some “Dreamers” will increase the federal deficit by an estimated $7 billion in the next 10 years, according to new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Other proposed changes to ObamaCare could cost the federal government another $383 billion over 10 years, if enacted.
Biden announced in May that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients — people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally as minors before June 2007 — can now get benefits from the Affordable Care Act, changing the Obama administration’s policy. The White House says this will help 100,000 people get health insurance.
That’s just a small part of the changes to the Affordable Care Act in the last few years.
In 2021, Biden’s pandemic stimulus package offered ObamaCare to more people than ever and gave existing consumers extra financial assistance.
The increased spending was supposed to end in one year, but Biden extended it to 2025. The president’s latest budget request to Congress calls for the expansion to be made permanent.
That would give ObamaCare to 6.9 million new people at a cost of $383 billion between 2025 and 2034, the CBO estimates. Half of those people would not have insurance otherwise, but the other half would enroll in ObamaCare when they could have used insurance offered by their employer, the CBO predicts.