Ohio’s state government came out with a new estimate of the effects ObamaCare will have on it’s Medicaid program. The massive expansion will cost taxpayers $1.45 billion in the first 5 years after it starts, in 2014. Given that Medicaid is currently a budget-busting problem for most states, this huge new cost will crowd out other spending, or force tax increases.
The Obama Administration has filed its response to the 20 state lawsuit challenging the Constitutionality of ObamaCare. Among the Justice Department’s arguments is a claim that forcing Americans to buy health insurance or pay a tax is a power granted to Congress just like the power to levy any other tax. This flatly contradicts Obama’s earlier insistence that the individual mandate was not a tax, but merely a responsibility fee. “Put another way, the administration is now arguing in federal court that Obama signed a massive middle-class tax increase, in violation of his campaign pledge.”
Despite promises that ObamaCare would be fully paid for and reduce the budget deficit, many of the savings will not materialize when the time comes. Firstly, it is extremely difficult from a technical perspective to correctly assess costs so far in the future. Secondly, many of the promised cuts are scheduled to take place far in the future in order to delay the political consequences of unpopular provisions, but future Congresses might not be willing to pay the political price for those cuts.
While ObamaCare doesn’t explicitly declare that it would fund abortions with taxpayer dollars, its end run around Hyde Amendment protections would provide that result — which is why Planned Parenthood is declaring “victory” in the wake of ObamaCare’s passage.