“But one thing that is sometimes lost in this debate is the significant opportunity costs involved in passing ObamaCare. That is, the money that Democrats raised through tax hikes and Medicare cuts is slated to be used to pay for a new entitlement program instead of to fix problems with existing entitlements.”
“What’s $2.3 trillion among friends? That’s the canyon between the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of a $9.5 trillion federal budget deficit over the next decade under White House proposals, and the White House’s own estimate of $7.2 trillion. The discrepancy emerged in a CBO analysis released Friday, not that it got much media attention.”
“Of course, I imagine that at this point supporters are saying that the best is yet to come–that ObamaCare just hasn’t really gotten going yet. Perhaps so! But this is the one year report card, and the first-year grades are pretty underwhelming.”
“Our current health care
arrangements have many
flaws, but we should not lose
sight of the many blessings
that come from the life
saving and life lengthening
technologies generated
by the U.S. health care system. Reforming the reforms is
our next task, one that I hope we will approach with more
sobriety and less partisanship than has been our recent
experience.”
“Among Obamacare’s hundreds of pages was tucked a new government-run long-term care program, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Program. CLASS was poorly designed, and actuaries criticized it as being unsustainable well before the passage of ObamaCare. It appears from three recent congressional appearances by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the Obama Administration has caught up with the actuarial analysis.”
“The few line items in the budget bearing the fingerprints of ObamaCare portend billions in expenses that have nothing to do with expanding access to care or making it more affordable.
For instance, in the 2011-2012 budget, the president has requested 1,270 new IRS agents to help implement the law. The agency will have to hire thousands more by 2014, when it will be tasked with making sure that all 300 million Americans comply with the law’s individual health insurance mandate.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also looking for some 4,700 new employees. Every single division of the HHS bureaucracy is set to grow.”
“The Democratic plan for closing the budget gap has always centered on raising taxes and rationing care. What most people don’t yet realize is just how far ObamaCare has already taken us down that road.”
“So mandates probably help explain part of the story. But government-subsidized coverage is likely a large factor too. Yet the response of those who authored the PPACA was not to change the way the government provides coverage. It was to expand the subsidization of generous coverage and, at the same, time, make it more difficult for insurers to weed out waste through activities like fraud prevention and utilization review. A decade from now, I suspect, The New York Times will be telling the same story.”
“During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted to double-counting in the Obamacare budget.”
“But of all the deceptive arguments and tactics ObamaCare’s apologists employed to jam their government takeover of health care through Congress, none was more egregious than the CLASS Act fraud.
CLASS — for Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act — was one of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s pet projects. It was sold as a miraculous twofer: The new program would provide both a self-financing, voluntary, long-term-care insurance program for those needing continuous assistance with daily living, and it would reduce the deficit to boot! What’s not to like?”