GREAT NEWS: Costs of Obamacare Exchanges Spike 29%... Before the Program Even Starts!

Unexpectedly, of course.

The CBO's new baseline estimate shows that ObamaCare subsidies offered through the insurance exchanges — which are supposed to be up and running by next January — will total more than $1 trillion through 2022, up from $814 billion over those same years in its budget forecast made a year ago.

That's an increase of nearly 29%...

Last year, the CBO said the average exchange subsidy for those getting federal help when ObamaCare goes into effect next year would be $4,780. Its latest estimate raised that to $5,510 — a 15% increase. All these numbers are up even more from the CBO's original forecast made in 2010, which had the first-year subsidy average at $3,970.

The CBO also expects 7 million workers will lose their employer coverage due to ObamaCare, almost twice as many as it had previously said would be dumped. It expects tax penalties on individuals and companies who don't buy insurance to be $36 billion higher from 2014 to 2019 than it originally forecast...

[And a] report out this week by the American Action Forum concluded that ObamaCare could nearly triple the cost of a relatively bare-bones insurance policy for younger workers. Should that occur, it would raise costs to those not eligible for subsidies and further inflate the taxpayer cost of the insurance exchanges.

The lunacy of passing an enormous new entitlement when Social Security and Medicare are headed for immediate collapse should be self-evident.

That said, over the last month, we've also found the following salient facts about Obamacare:

• According to Robert Gibbs and Paul Krugman, there really are Death Panels.

• If you like your health care plans, 7 million of you won't be able to keep your health care plans.

• And up to 500,000 children will be dropped from their current health insurance plans because of a "glitch" in Obamacare itself.

And to think: the law really hasn't even kicked in yet and it's already collapsing under its own weight.

Perhaps next time, the would-be dictators and tyrants on the Left could actually allow Americans to read the damn bill before passing it. Or is that too much to ask?