A study by Joseph Antos, American Enterprise Institute; Roland (Guy) King, King Associates; Donald Muse, Muse & Associates; Tom Wildsmith, Hay Group; and Judy Xanthopoulos, economic consultant.

The study is availabe in Adobe Acrobat PDF format

Led by AEI scholar Joseph Antos, a team of experienced independent actuaries and cost estimators presented today the most detailed analysis of President George W. Bush’s and Senator John Kerry’s health care reform proposals that has thus far been made publicly available. The candidates have adopted very different strategies to extend health coverage to the uninsured. Senator Kerry would expand government health programs and subsidize employers to provide insurance to their employees, with lesser subsidies going directly to individuals. President Bush would extend new tax credits to individuals and would promote the purchase of high-deductible insurance. The AEI analysts estimated widely different costs and impacts for the two proposals.

• The Kerry plan would increase federal spending over the ten-year period 2006–2015 by $1.5 trillion. Over the same period, the Bush plan would cost the federal government $128.6 billion.
• Under their proposals, Senator Kerry would dedicate $622 billion to the uninsured; President Bush would commit $39.4 billion.
• The Kerry plan would newly insure 27.3 million Americans. The Bush plan would newly insure 6.7 million.

The study also compares its estimates of the Kerry plan with estimates produced by Kenneth Thorpe that are widely used by the Kerry campaign.

• According to the AEI estimate, the Kerry plan would increase federal spending by $1.5 trillion (2006–2015). According to the Thorpe estimate, that increase would be $653 billion (2006–2014).
• According to the AEI estimate, the Kerry plan would newly insure 27.3 million Americans. Thorpe estimates the proposal would newly cover 26.7 million people.

Biographies of the independent estimators.

Joseph Antos’s AEI biography.

Media inquiries: Véronique Rodman
202.862.4871 (vrodman@aei.org)