New Study: Obamacare Will Hugely Increase Federal Deficits!
From Fox News, fair and balanced:
WASHINGTON – A former Bush administration official and leading conservative economist says President Obama’s health care law will add at least $340 billion to the national deficit, a claim the White House denies.In a study to be released Tuesday, Charles Blahous, who serves as public trustee overseeing Medicare and Social Security finances, says federal accounting practices have obscured the true fiscal impact of ObamaCare…
“Taken as a whole, the enactment of the (health care law) has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook,” Blahous wrote in his 52-page analysis, released by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “The (law) both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law.”
Exactly what right-thinking, non-arithmetic-challenged individuals have been saying all along. You can’t increase demand for healthcare services by 30 to 50 million (or more!) while reducing supply by over $500 billion, and then claim to be lowering prices.
Blahous cited a number of factors for his conclusion:– The health care’s law deficit cushion has been reduced by more than $80 billion because of the administration’s decision not to move forward with a new long-term care insurance program that was part of the legislation. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program raised money in the short turn, but would have turned into a fiscal drain over the years.
– The cost of health insurance subsidies for millions of low-income and middle-class uninsured people could turn out to be higher than forecast, particularly if employers scale back their own coverage.
– Various cost control measures, including a tax on high-end insurance plans that doesn’t kick in until 2018, could deliver less than expected.
The decision to use Medicare cuts to finance the expansion of coverage for the uninsured will only make matters worse, Blahous said. The money from the Medicare savings will have been spent, and lawmakers will have to find additional cuts or revenues to forestall that program’s insolvency.
Under federal accounting rules, the Medicare cuts are also credited as savings to that program’s trust fund. But the CBO and Medicare’s own economic estimators already said the government can’t spend the same money twice.
That “scaleback” in employer-paid healthcare coverage is already occurring, again as predicted, despite Obama’s repeated claims to the American public that “if you like your current plan you can keep it.” With rising costs due to the Obamacare law, and the weak Obama recovery, small and mid-sized companies are being forced to drop or reduce their healthcare coverage, forcing even more individuals and families into the federal feeding pens.
The federal government’s entitlement programs, all of them, are out of control and financially unsustainable. Obamacare only makes things worse… for everyone.
Tags: obamacare
