May 11, 2011 1:47PM
# Obama Admin. Repeats Discredited Cost-Shifting Claim in Federal Court
By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon)
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Defending [ObamaCare](https://www.cato.org/bad-medicine/) in federal court yesterday, the Obama administration’s acting solicitor general, Neal K. Katyal, [peddled](http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/05/easy-outing-for-health-care-law/) the widely discredited claim that the uninsured increase your and my health insurance premiums by $1,000:
> “When people self-finance their health care,” Katyal contended, “that raises the cost of health care overall by $43 billion a year, and that raises the average family’s premiums by $1,000 a year. That will price untold numbers of people out of the market.”
That estimate comes from two left-wing groups, [Families USA](http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/reports/paying-a-premium.html) and the [Center for American Progress Action Fund](http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2009/03/cost_shift.html).
When President Obama himself made this claim, [FactCheck.org](http://www.factcheck.org/politics/obamas_health_care_claims.html) reported:
> \[Obama\] said “the average family pays a thousand dollars in extra premiums to pay for people going to the emergency room who don’t have health insurance.” That’s from a recent report by Families USA, a group that lobbies for expanded government coverage. But [another study](http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7809.pdf) for the authoritative Kaiser Family Foundation thinks that figure is far too high.
Serendipitously, the *same day* that Kaytal was repeating this discredited claim in federal court, *USA Today* [reported]():
> Jack Hadley, senior health services researcher at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va…has found that **privately insured individuals don’t end up paying higher premiums to make up for the uninsured** because hospitals that serve lower-income families don’t have a lot of patients with insurance. He said the government pays about 75% of those unpaid hospital bills either by direct payment or through a disproportionate payment of Medicaid. (emphasis added)
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[General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care)
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