The Political Fish

At least according to the CATO Institute. It seems that Congress has pulled a few of their patented budget tricks to try and mask the actual cost of the healthcare bill. CATO analyst Michael Cannon hashes out the details here.

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).

Here’s where things get really ugly.  TPMDC’s Brian Beutler calls “the” $2.5-trillion cost estimate a “doozy” of a “hysterical Republican whopper.”  Not only is he incorrect, he doesn’t seem to realize that Gregg and I are correcting for different budget gimmicks; it’s just a coincidence that we happened to reach the same number.

When we correct for both gimmicks, counting both on- and off-budget costs over the first 10 years of implementation, the total cost of ObamaCare reaches — I’m so sorry about this — $6.25 trillion.  That’s not a precise estimate.  It’s just far closer to the truth than President Obama and congressional Democrats want the debate to be.

One way to limit this outrageous cost would be to limit any proposed healthcare reform to legal citizens and legal aliens. Sadly, the Senate bill as well as the House bill do nothing to safeguard against illegal aliens hoppin’ on board the taxpayer dole and receiving their very own shiny healthcare policy, courtesy of the American taxpayer. You might recall our good friend Joe Wilson shouting out above the crowd “You LIE” when President Obama stated in no uncertain terms that his proposals would not cover those here illegally. 

“This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,” Mr. Obama said.

It seems Mr. Obama failed to consult with the runaway Congress on this proposal. Its bad politics you know to discriminate against those who knowingly break the laws and the sovereignty of the United States. Both bills that came out from behind closed doors, completed in secrecy by the Party leaders of the House and Senate, fail miserably in controlling the misuse and abuse of the system at the hands of illegals. One could even argue, that by controlling illegal immigration you could alleviate much of the cost burden that is currently draining the system…but that is for another time…

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