A study released today finds that between 29.8 million and 31.0 million people will remain uninsured after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2016.

The research team from Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York School of Public Health projects that the demographic composition of today’s uninsured population will change little under Obamacare.

Private insurance companies that participate in Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program and its predecessors have cost the publicly funded program for the elderly and disabled an extra $282.6 billion since 1985, most of it over the past eight years. In 2012 alone, private insurers were overpaid $34.1 billion.

That’s wasted money that should have been spent on improving patient care, shoring up Medicare’s trust fund or reducing the federal deficit, the researchers say.