'Affordable' care: 7 million to lose insurance under new health care law

Most of US President Barack Obama’s hallmark health care reform law will go into place next year, but a new bipartisan review suggests it will be a slow start for the program.

In an analysis released this week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) writes that last-minute tax changes enacted to avoid the looming fiscal cliff dilemma will largely impact who is covered and how they will be insured under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the president’s highly touted bill that has been renamed ‘Obamacare’ by its critics.

According to the CBO, maneuvers made last month to avoid a financial meltdown are likely to have made significant changes to how the president’s health care bill will work. Perhaps most significant, tax cut revisions made last month could move as many as 7 million Americans out of their job-based insurance coverage and leave them to either remain uninsured or attempt to navigate a system still ripe with kinks.

Tax cuts that were went into effect just this year alter the incentives for employers who offer health insurance, the Washington Times reports, creating a “less attractive” model that is likely to lead to fewer companies extending health care to employees.

“Instead, they'll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade,” Stephen Dinan writes for the Times.

Previous estimates had suggested that only around 4 million Americans would be displaced of their insurance through Obamacare.

more here: http://rt.com/usa/news/care-million-insurance-health-593/