An estimated 17 million people will be eligible for an Obamacare premium subsidy next year according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Under Obamacare people with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line could qualify for premium tax credits if they buy insurance coverage on the exchanges.
According to the Kaiser analysis over 17 million people who are currently uninsured or who buy individual plans will be eligible for a premium tax credit to offset the cost of insurance on the exchange in 2014. The amount of the credit will depend on their location, the cost of the plan, and their income.
The states with the most estimated tax-credit-eligible residents include Texas (2,049,000), California (1,903,000), and Florida (1,587,000). The District of Columbia (9,500) and Vermont (27,000) have the fewest.
The report further estimated that 29 million people would look into the new Obamacare exchanges as “a place to purchase coverage.”
While more than 17 million people could be eligible for premium credits, Kaiser notes that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that 7 million people will enroll in health insurance in 2014, 6 million of whom will receive those credits — or 25 percent of potential exchange participants and 35 percent of the subsidy-eligible people.
“From the perspective of delivering assistance to people eligible for it, enrollment in exchanges is a key measure, since tax credits are only available to those who buy coverage on their own in an exchange. It often takes time for enrollment in a new program to ramp up, and consistent with this view, CBO projects the number of people receiving tax credits in exchanges to triple by 2016,” the report reads.
Kaiser reached its estimates using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).