"ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years"
vict0r
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional
costs with budget gimmicks.
o It "pays for" about six years of program with a
decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five
years.
o The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by
21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion.
o ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will
grow more after that.
. . .
The Worst Bill Ever
Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest
accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's
prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare,
and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which
President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst
piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.
In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been
derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime
levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class
entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise
precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control
of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.
Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan
"reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race
against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through
whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal
coverage." The result will be destructive on every level-for the health-care
system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American
freedom and prosperity.
.The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House
program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the
$829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a
low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges"
where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level-that is, up
to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016-could buy coverage at heavily
subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of
insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000,
and so forth.
At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose
employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or
fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this
"firewall"-which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors
are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone
else in Washington.
Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional
costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a
decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five
years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by
21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion.
ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will
grow more after that.
. Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly
reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare-now north of $37
trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future
Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price
controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut
that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune
of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out
five seniors private insurance options.
As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of
the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to
the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A
decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program
originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.
Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint
state-federal program-up from today's 57%-governors would still be forced to
take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento
are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything
like the House bill passes.
. European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in
new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint
filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise
the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts
expire-not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain
deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small
businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability
corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering
their incomes.
This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative
minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly
enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of
people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only
raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class,
perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has
endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.
Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their
payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of
their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes
always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences
for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has
one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on
the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has
done by expanding its welfare states.
Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed
on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019.
Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically
unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would
expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the
deficit.
. The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide
what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer
as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they
are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually
the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical
history.
The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint
estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual
market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true
for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177
million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all
contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor
from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.
The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and
reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial
incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become
government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands:
There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.
***
All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The
overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the
Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility.
Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S.
health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs.
Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to
include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so
that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share
even further.
As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new
obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making
cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to
receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live
in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is
nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is
inevitable-especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs
that are the future of medicine.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters
realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even
more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are
exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's
handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial
Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously
contemplated.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574505423751140690.html
Alex Clayton
news:XH%Im.141805$Xw3.1...@en-nntp-04.dc1.easynews.com...
>
> Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional
> costs with budget gimmicks.
>
> o It "pays for" about six years of program with a
> decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five
> years.
>
> o The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by
> 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion.
>
>
> o ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it
> will
> grow more after that.
>
> . . .
>
> The Worst Bill Ever
>
>
>
Oh BS. It's such a great plan that all the congress people are saying they
are going to drop their plans to sign up for the one they are giving us.
Now that's a good plan!!
--
Things get better with age. I'm approaching magnificent!!
Dänk 1010011010
> Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional
> costs with budget gimmicks.
>
> o It "pays for" about six years of program with a
> decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five
> years.
>
> o The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by
> 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion.
>
> o ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will
> grow more after that.
The Medicare Part D prescription benefit that the President Bush and
Republicans promoted and which the Democrats (including Nancy Pelosi)
voted for in 2003 was originally promised to cost 'only' $400 billion
over ten years. Within a month the price tag jumped to $550 billion,
and it is now approaching $1 trillion after only 7 years.
From what I've witnessed in my life, it seems that EVERY federal
government program ALWAYS winds up costing at least 2-3x as the
original estimate. So if Democrats are estimating that universal
health care will cost $1 trillion, it will cost at least $3 trillion -
and that figure does not include the inevitable expansion of the
program, just the cost overrun for the original proposed benefits.
In the private sector, cost overruns are the contractor's
responsibility, and if the contractor made an unreasonably low bid in
order to win a contract it is his problem, and he has to pay the
difference between what he bid and what the project actually cost.
But if Nancy Pelosi makes an unreasonably low bid in order to sell her
national health care plan to the American people, she does not have to
pay if it costs more than what she promised. Since there is no
accountability on their part, Congress has no incentive to reveal the
program's true cost to the American people.
zzpat
Dänk 1010011010 wrote:
>
> In the private sector, cost overruns are the contractor's
> responsibility, and if the contractor made an unreasonably low bid in
> order to win a contract it is his problem, and he has to pay the
> difference between what he bid and what the project actually cost.
> But if Nancy Pelosi makes an unreasonably low bid in order to sell her
> national health care plan to the American people, she does not have to
> pay if it costs more than what she promised. Since there is no
> accountability on their part, Congress has no incentive to reveal the
> program's true cost to the American people.
The Bush White House threatened anyone who dared talk about the cost
of their Medicare prescription drug plan. The republican party and
the media never once asked how they were going to pay for it. Things
are different today...with the GOP out of power the media is
constantly asking how Obama is going to pay for what he's spending and
of course the polling companies have the GOP spin in all their polls.
It kinda reminds me of Newt's Contract with America. Only a few short
years later, nothing Newt did in that contract is still law so it was
easy passing things that were meaningless. The media ate it up.
20 years from now, we'll still have the health care reform Obama signs
into law. With each passing year the GOP looks more and more
inept..it has power and achieved nothing, while the Democrats continue
to grow in strength.
A two party system was good until the GOP broke down after Reagan.
Since then they're becoming increasingly irrelevant.
If a republican says something, almost every educated person has to
wonder if he's telling the truth. WMDs, killing grandma etc. They've
become the party of endless drivel....the party of Bill Kristol.
sr
"zzpat" <zzpa...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1e1d7bb8-6912-4290...@g23g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
D�nk 1010011010 wrote:
----Bill Kristol, is too soft