Have you ever been in a situation where you are thinking about making a major purchase only to be pressured by an over zealous sales person. You tell him you would like some information about a product and you would like to think about it. Then the next thing you know they are standing in front of the door trying to convince you that today is the last day you can get such a deal. Such is the life of a salesman, but sadly this is becoming the way of our Democratic leadership as well. Personally I was taught that this tactic should raise an immediate red flag. I guess many in Congress were not taught this bit of common sense. But it happened with the Stimulus Bill, it happened with Cap and Trade, and now this tactic is being used again with healthcare. President Obama is forcing yet another poor policy to a vote before it can be properly debated. The urgency of getting healthcare passed quickly is mainly due to the fact that the plan is very costly and once again expands the government. Red flags are being thrown out left and right and they need to get it passed before people understand the true dangers of what they are doing.
One of these red flags is the universal healthcare plan in Massachusetts. It was created in 2006 and is already facing problems. Last week a Massachusetts hospital sued the state because its universal healthcare law is forcing the hospital to cover too much of the expense of caring for the poor. After only 3 years the government cannot afford to reimburse the hospital for these costs causing a deficit for the first time in 5 years. This deficit for this one hospital will balloon to over $100 million next year. This is the problem of using taxpayer money to subsidize healthcare, which is what Obama is proposing. Of course they say that by the government taking over they will reduce costs. It is in fact a main argument for the plan currently on the table. But the CBO does not agree.
Kent Conrad: (D-ND) “I’m going to really put you on the spot. From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?”
Elmendorf : “No, Mr. Chairman. On the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.”
The CBO also has criticized this current legislation because it does not reform the current health care entitlements. So this means that the government is expanding its responsibility to provide health care (paid for with additional taxes), but has not reformed the system that is not working. At the same time the White House is also requesting more power for the executive branch to determine Medicare reimbursement rates. If this request is granted in combination with the public government health care option, the government will effectively own the healthcare industry. This small detail basically blows their stated motive for the public option out of the water. This is their way of controlling these costs. By determining who gets what care and who doesn’t. But even then I do not believe these costs will be reduced significantly. I do not even believe Congress is being honest about these costs in the first place. Look at this chart.
You will see that this legislation delays certain costs until later years. This is a very deceptive practice because the CBO calculates costs for 10 years. Real costs do not start to appear until 2013 (interesting timeline) and steadily rise from there. The reality is that the annual costs for this plan are over 250 billion a year if they do not continue to rise. So in reality the long term costs of this legislation are much higher than being reported with 10 year costs more realistically 2.3 trillion instead of 1.3. Thanks to the Heritage Foundation and their cool guy chart we can see this. I would like to remind people though that these are estimated costs. When Britain tried to socialize their healthcare system in the late 1940s they underestimated the costs by about 600 million pounds. I do not want to even think about how much that is in today’s dollars. In light of this, we can only hope that our Congressmen understand these fiscal dangers and stay strong even in the face of the Chicago style politics that this administration will surely use against them…ie..more threatening letters from cabinet members ordered by Rahm Emanuel.
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