House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the House version of Obamacare would come in under $900 billion over ten years. I said, bunk. First, the expenses will only be for seven years since it wouldn’t start until 2013. Moreover, said I, the thing had to be smoke and mirrors and gimmicks. No surprise, I was right. Take out the gimmicks and budget games, and it is over a trillion. From the story:
Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.
Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill’s true cost by $150 billion or more. That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added. The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly
That’s a lot of zeros anyway you count it and a sure way to break what’s left of our shaky solvency. And aren’t you just sick of the mendacity?
October 25th, 2009 | 7:42 am
[...] abstract had to be respiration and mirrors and gimmicks. No surprise, I was right View post: Obamacare: Pushing to Break the Bank » Secondhand Smoke | A First … Posted in Health, Uncategorized | Tags: and-mirrors, budget-games, care-legislation, [...]
October 25th, 2009 | 12:12 pm
Wow. $800 billion in ten years? How long would it take us to spend that much in Iraq*? Couple of weeks?
* Which now has a public national health plan, by the way.
October 25th, 2009 | 4:38 pm
[...] night I posted a comment on the fiscal falsehoods of Obamacare pushers in the House. Now, a column by Jack Kelly at Real Clear Politics, illuminates how this corruption of democracy [...]
October 25th, 2009 | 6:27 pm
Hey, maybe Iraq can afford a national health plan. They have lots of oil and fewer people. As far as I can tell, the total amount spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in total since 2001 is about $900 billion, which I think counts things like troop salaries and living costs that would still have to be paid if we were at peace.
Maybe we could afford the plan if we were to disband our military entirely, since the Department of Defense got $585 billion in FY 2009, but I don’t think any administration is likely to do this (for starters, it would put over 2 million people out of work). And as Wesley has pointed out, the Baucus bill only costs $900 billion if you accept accounting chicanery used in the bill to keep the costs down.
The bottom line is that we can’t afford the entitlements we already have, let alone new ones.
October 25th, 2009 | 8:53 pm
“As far as I can tell, the total amount spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in total since 2001 is about $900 billion, which I think counts things like troop salaries and living costs that would still have to be paid if we were at peace.”
So if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, we could have paid for our health plan already? Good point.
BTW, the troop salaries ain’t that much. And a lot of those troops were National Guard call-ups (like my brother-in-law) so they don’t draw peacetime salaries. The bigger cost is getting them over there and keeping them there.
Oh, and then there’s Blackwater or Blackoppers or whatever they call themselves…
October 26th, 2009 | 2:22 pm
It’s $900 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq combined, I think about a $300B/$600B split respectively. And I think those numbers do contain some costs that would have been incurred anyway.
And the Baucus bill is $800 billion over 10 years, with the revenue frontloaded, and a 21% Medicare cut factored in that nobody expects to actually happen. We already spend more on Medicare/Medicaid than our entire defense budget, and more on Social Security than Medicare/Medicaid. Again, I do not think we can afford our current entitlements, let alone new ones.
October 26th, 2009 | 7:08 pm
[...] OBAMACARE: Pushing to Break the Bank …. [...]
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