President Obamas health-care law will cost taxpayers substantially less than previously estimated, congressional budget officials said Monday, in an upbeat note for a program that has faced withering criticism since its passage five years ago.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office attributed the savings to spending on medical care in coming years that will not be as great as previously forecast. As a result, the agency said, insurers are not expected to charge Americans as much for coverage, and the government will save on subsidies for low- and moderate-income people.

Whats more, the CBO has concluded that companies are not canceling health insurance policies as often as had been anticipated earlier this year. Fewer Americans consequently are planning to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, generating more taxpayer savings.

In total, the health-care law will cost taxpayers $142 billion, or 11 percent, less over the next decade than estimated in January. The cost of providing subsidies for people to buy insurance on the state and federal marketplaces the centerpiece of the law will be 20 percent lower than projected.

The savings are a positive development for a program that has been battered by bad news, from the botched rollout of the main enrollment Web site in 2013 to a legal challenge before the Supreme Court last week.

Theres certainly a lot of rhetoric by the laws opponents that costs are going to explode, that costs are out of control, that Obamacare had no cost containment in it, said John Holahan, an economist at the Urban Institute. I cant see how people can continue to say those things.

The report is one of a growing number of assessments of the laws impact on the nations economy, budget outlook and health insurance market long-debated topics since before its passage in March 2010.

On Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced that as of Feb. 22, nearly 11.7million people across the country had signed up for or reenrolled in health insurance through the state and federal marketplaces.

Last week, Gallup reported that the share of Americans without insurance coverage continued the slide that began after the law went into effect, with 12.3percent of the population uninsured at the end of February.

A role in slower spending?

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Health-care law will cost taxpayers less than expected, CBO says