Weekly Checkup
March 13, 2014
HHS Releases Exchange Implementation Funding Sources
As a part of the release of President Obama’s proposed FY2015 budget, the administration was required to release the amount of federal funds spent implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges, and provide details on which accounts were used. From the numbers, it is clear that the ACA did not appropriate sufficient funding.
According to the report by the Department of Health and Human Services, the exchanges alone have cost a whopping $3.3 billion from 2010-2014, $300 million of which came from the $1 billion earmarked for the “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” in the ACA legislation; a laughably low amount given the massive scale of the law. The remaining $3 billion have come from other HHS and CMS accounts, which are fairly vague (for example, the “non-recurring expenses” fund) as shown below.
