One of the ongoing battles of the past several years has been the debate over the accounting for President Obama’s national health care law. Earlier this week at Forbes, Avik Roy highlighted that Obama’s new budget projects that the law’s subsidies to purchase health insurance on new exchanges would cost $111 billion more from 2012 through 2021 than projected a year ago. The revelation raises questions both about the reason for the change and how it would affect deficit-reduction estimates.
Roy mentions a number of possible reasons. One potential factor I’d flag is the detioration of White House economic projections compared with a year ago. Higher than expected unemployment means more people are likely to get their health insurance through a government exchange. As I reported last month, at a hearing before the House Budget Committee:
