Tuesday Links

Posted on by John C. Goodman

Food stamp households spend a disproportionate share of their food budget on unhealthy items, such as sugary beverages and prepared desserts. And it’s worse than other low-income households who don’t have food stamps.

Social Security tells Kotlikoff the number of Social Security clawback letters per year is probably closer to 3 million. (It started at 1M in a congressional hearing; then jumped to 2M in answer to a FOIA request by KFF; and now it’s at 3M. (No telling what the real answer is.)

Less than half of the benefit of Obamacare subsides goes to the newly insured. One-third of it is wasted.

In 2023, 79 percent of (Obamacare) enrollees received subsidies (up from 44 percent in 2015), at an average cost of $20,739 per enrollee gaining coverage.

2 thoughts on “Tuesday Links”

  1. I’ve always thought that 100 percent of Obamacare enrollees deserve subsidies, in order to offset at least some of the excess above their actuarial cost. Probably in the form of a fixed-dollar credit against ACA premiums, to be applied before any additional means-tested subsidies are calculated.

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  2. There is some possibly-fishy use of numbers in the article by Chris Pope. I am referring to that estimate of $20,739 per newly enrolled ACA member.

    The same number popped up a couple of weeks ago in a similar article.
    The slippery item is this:

    The ACA spent $60 billion in subsidies.

    The ACA added about 3 million insureds.

    Presto, you have $20,000 per new member allowed.

    Now, I was an ACA navigator, and I know that premiums and subsidies have changed, but I still say that it is almost impossible for an individual to get a subsidy of $20,000. (A family can get that large a subsidy.)

    It would be more meaningful to give us the average subsidy per person in the whole ACA portfolio.

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