by the Left Coast Rebel
The highway to hell and bankruptcy, Michael F. Cannon at Cato weighing in on several budgets gimmicks that Congress has implemented to come up with the (low?) figure of $1 trillion over ten years for Obamacare. The truth and actual number is far, far away from that. He explains:
Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years. Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.
One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010-2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”
Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health
insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending. That’s a sharp departure from how the CBO treated similar mandates in the Clinton health plan. And it hides maybe 60 percent of the legislation’s total costs. When I correct for that gimmick, it brings total costs to roughly $2.5 trillion (i.e., $1 trillion/0.4).
Read the rest of the details here
Via Memeorandum
4 comments:
Is that all? I figure it will end up costing 10-20 trillion. Look at the great society. I think they said t would cost 3 billion or something like that and by 1990 it was up around 120 billion. Politicians seem to forget the past.
I don't understand why the 20 year olds are not screaming and jumping up and down. They will be forced to pay 1K per month or go to jail? WHAT! My daughter is 21 years old. I feel sorry for her and all my kids/grandkids/great grandkids if this travesty is implemented.
great.
linked
Thanks for the article. I think many Americans intuitively sensed this, and now CATO has quantified it.
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