The Cost of ObamaCare
- Thread starter Suspicious-Teach8788
- Start date
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
I don't understand! How could it possibly increase the deficit or substantially increase taxes when it would result in a cheaper health system across the board!!! They said it would be free like in Canada????
PJABBER
Diamond Member
- Feb 8, 2001
- 4,822
- 0
- 0
:thumbsdown:
REPORTED. (This could be fun, in a way that only people in the old Soviet Union used to appreciate!)
Thanks for posting the link, OP, you beat me by a couple of minutes. I am going to paste in the article body as it is relatively short and because there are a lot of lurkers/posters here that don't like to click through to read anything.
I would recommend clicking through, though, the article includes a chart graphic that conveys the point of the article quite well. And I highly recommend that everyone actually take the time to read this analysis, it is that important to your well being.
The problem with current proposals is the almost complete lack of any plan to pay for the benefits that being offered. There has been discussion of the massive changes being ?deficit neutral?, but this article goes into the fact that these entitlement programs completely ignore the unfunded costs going out past ten years.
ObamaCare?s Real Price Tag
The funding gap is a canyon by year 10.
As ObamaCare sinks in the polls, Democrats are complaining that the critics are distorting their proposals. But the truth is that the closer one inspects the actual details, the worse it all looks. Today?s example is the vast debt canyon that would open just beyond the 10-year window under which the bill is officially ?scored? for cost purposes.
The press corps has noticed the Congressional Budget Office?s estimate that the House health bill increases the deficit by $239 billion over the next decade. But government-run health care won?t turn into a pumpkin after a decade. The underreported news is the new spending that will continue to increase well beyond the 10-year period that CBO examines, and that this blowout will overwhelm even the House Democrats? huge tax increases, Medicare spending cuts and other ?pay fors.?
In a July 26 letter, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf notes that the net costs of new spending will increase at more than 8% per year between 2019 and 2029, while new revenue would only grow at about 5%. ?In sum,? he writes, ?relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.? (The House bill has changed somewhat in the meantime, but not enough to alter these numbers much.)
The nearby chart shows this Grand Canyon between spending and revenue, including CBO?s long-term predictions. While these are obviously very coarse estimates, there?s also a projection of a $65 billion deficit in the 10th year?and ?deficit neutrality in the 10th year is . . . the best proxy for what will happen in the second decade.?
That?s not our outlook. That?s what White House budget director Peter Orszag told the House Budget Committee in June. He added that ?If you?re not falling off a cliff at the end of your projection window, that is your best assurance that the long-term trajectory is also stable.? The House bill falls off a cliff.
And the CBO score almost surely understates this deficit chasm because CBO uses static revenue analysis?assuming that higher taxes won?t change behavior. But long experience shows that higher rates rarely yield the revenues that they project.
As for the spending, when has a new entitlement ever come in under budget? True, the 2003 prescription drug benefit has, but those surprise savings derived from the private insurance design and competition that Democrats opposed and now want to kill. The better model for ObamaCare is the original estimate for Medicare spending when it was passed in 1965, and what has happened since.
That year, Congressional actuaries (CBO wasn?t around then) expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion in 1970. In 1969, that estimate was pushed to $5 billion, and it really came in at $6.8 billion. House Ways and Means analysts estimated in 1967 that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. They were off by a factor of 10?actual spending was $110 billion?even as its benefits coverage failed to keep pace with standards in the private market. Medicare spending in the first nine months of this fiscal year is $314 billion and growing by 10%. Some of this historical error is due to 1970s-era inflation, as well as advancements in care and technology. But Democrats also clearly underestimated?or lowballed?the public?s appetite for ?free? health care.
ObamaCare?s deficit hole will eventually have to be filled one way or another?along with Medicare?s unfunded liability of some $37 trillion. That means either reaching ever-deeper into middle-class pockets with taxes, probably with a European-style value-added tax that will depress economic growth. Or with the very restrictions on care and reimbursement that have been imposed on Medicare itself as costs exploded.
On the latter point, the 1965 Medicare statute explicitly stated that ?Nothing in this title shall be construed to authorize any Federal official or employee to exercise any supervision or control over the practice of medicine or the manner in which medical services are provided.? Yet now such government management of doctors and hospitals is so pervasive in Medicare that Mr. Obama can casually wonder in a recent interview with Time magazine how anyone could oppose the ?benign changes? that he supports, such as ?how the delivery system works.? Oh, is that all?
Democrats will return in the fall with various budget tweaks that will claim to make ObamaCare ?deficit neutral? over 10 years. But that won?t begin to account for the budget abyss it will create in the decades to come.
The economy does not equal the federal deficit. No matter what Congress does or does not do with respect to health care, we are all sitting on a precipice. The current "uniquely American" health care financing model is bankrupting individuals, companies, and governments at all levels. The CBO estimates may or may not be correct about the effect of the various bills; they tell us nothing about the financial catastrophe that awaits usthe US economy overall if we don't make some fundamental changes.
IMHO, Obama made a big mistake by promising that people who like their current plans could keep them because private employers are already being pushed to the wall by health expenses. Opponents to the "public option" who complain that companies might discontinue their coverage in favor of that completely ignore the fact that in many, many cases, the alternative is that companies will drop coverage entirely or reduce coverage to the point that many "covered" individuals find little benefit.
Not true No one in a position of responsibility has ever claimed that the proposals under discussion would result in anything even remotely similar to the Canadian, single-payer, private provider, health care system.
Meanwhile we almost spend more money on defense than every other country in the world combined. The proposal is a sham anyway, in the spirit of bipartisanship the public option is going to be axed, and then it will just amount to Obama forcing everyone to pad private insurance numbers while making them promise extra nice not to continue raising premiums.
I wouldnt be surprised if we currently spend more on medicare and medicaid than other countries combined as well. Our federal budget is bigger than all but 3 economies.
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
Surely if such a catastrophe looms someone has crafted their own version of the chart in the link reflecting as much? It should be easy to simply lay them side by side and compare, no?
While military spending is definitely overboard in areas, I think this is funny too. What was the number again about Italy? I think it was something like we could spend like 1/3 of the federal 09 budget and buy every single thing Italy produced in 2008 haha. It's pretty ridiculous when you think about it.
her209
No Lifer
- Oct 11, 2000
- 56,336
- 11
- 0
Wait, but the CBO got the unemployment projections wrong. How can they be trusted?
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=9957&type=1
Because the federal budget and the US economy are not the same thing? Or even remotely close to the same thing? Is this really escaping you?
Fingolfin269
Lifer
- Feb 28, 2003
- 17,948
- 34
- 91
Still waiting on that chart showing what it will cost us to leave things as they are... Seriously, if your assertions are true then surely someone has done this work for you already. You are the ones who want change so really the burden is on you to prove with mathematics that it will be better. To prove that it won't stick the middle class with heftier taxes. To prove that the level of service of those who will likely foot the majority of the bill will not decline. Etc.
Now, you'll get to do both! You'll pay for them to see a physician, who they'll ignore (see the example of smokers and the obese), and then when they end up in the hospital because they refuse to discontinue unhealthy lifestyle choices.
blackangst1
Lifer
- Feb 23, 2005
- 22,902
- 2,359
- 126
As I said in another thread...Obama is going to eclipse GWB as the president who fucked this country. It has gone from a fucking to a gang rape with no lube.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 25K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 21K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter