Cato Institute: The True Cost Of The Health Care Bill Is Over $6 Trillion
Cato’s Michael Cannon notes that there are two primary budgeting tricks being used by Democrats to conceal the true cost of their health care bill.
The first trick has to do with timing. In the analysis of the cost of the bill the Democrats are using they use a 10 year window that has the bill collecting revenues (taxes) for all ten of those years while actually only starting to pay out for health care for six years. By front-loading the revenues liberals can claim that the bill is deficit-neutral even though in the long run nothing is further from the truth.
The second trick has to do with the way the cost of the insurance mandate to the public is calculated. The Democrats account for Americans paying taxes to the government under this bill, and for the government paying for health care under the bill, but they don’t account for the health insurance mandate forcing Americans to pay direction for the government-defined health care plan that will be their only choice.
The cost of both of these things to the public, both in the form of money paid to the government and money spent to comply with government mandates? Over $6 trillion:
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.
This isn’t hyperbole. This is fact. And, what’s more, if the government decides to try and keep these costs down they’ll accomplish it through rationing including things like refusing to cover mammograms for women in their 40’s.
Our health care status quo is far from perfect. But this bill, as Howard Dean himself recently pointed out, makes things worse. Not better.
