Oct 08 2009
Spend $100 dollars to save $10?
The silly news out of DC on the cost of the senate health insurance reform reminds me of an old Gallagher line about how is wife spent thousands of dollars each week shopping all the sales. His line went something like: “We have nothing in the bank, but we’re ahead by millions!”
The media arm of the Political Industrial Complex is out ringing the bells that deficit reducing health care is here! Over the next 10 years we will save $81 billion dollars! The catch: to get this cool $81 billion dollars we have spend $830 billion.
Tell you what America, give me $500 billion and I will give back $100 billion over ten years for a cool $400 billion in savings! How’s that?
If you ever learned the lesson “what sounds too good to be true, usually is not true” then you probably ain’t buying this lame hype. Where did the $830 billion come from? Taxpayers and what’s left of their dwindling disposable income. And who gets the $81 billion in savings? Not the taxpayers! Lose-lose.
How stupid do these people think Americans are? We all know that to get the $830 billion (and we know it won’t only be 830 billion, it will be some multiple of this higher) Congress is raiding Medicare, it is taxing drugs and medical devices and whatever else it can find (sodas?). We are ran a $1.4 trillion dollar deficit this last government fiscal year. We don’t have the $83 billion a year for this con just laying around not being spent.
And the worse part – it won’t do much good. It is an enormous cost to get 23 million people  (4.3% of the total population) onto some kind of insurance plan. Heck, you could give each of those 23 million $3,600 a year and it would be less complicated and risky.
Even the far left says the bill doesn’t do much for all of us already covered (which, to pass, it better not ‘do much’ to our existing plans):
That leaves 245 million non-elderly Americans who will pretty much be in the exact place they would’ve been otherwise. As for the elderly, the CBO doesn’t include them because they’re on Medicare. They, too, will be where they otherwise would’ve been.
245 million workers and their families will be bearing the burden for of the 23 million ‘uninsured’ as well as taking care of their own needs. That means those 245 million individuals are footing the bill for this mess, and that comes out to $3,387 per individual. For our family of six that means we have to cough up $20,326.
Trust me, we have our own needs for this money – after all, we earned it. I say we stick with the current system where we cover the uninsured through increased prices and premiums and just stop pretending all this nonsense about ‘choice’ and ‘competition’Â means ‘lower cost’ and ‘better care’.
It is all a fiction folks. It is all a fantasy. A myth, an equation that is flawed and will never work. There is no magic wand out there that will make it cheaper to live longer and better. Biology is a very complicated natural wonder. We have exploited our knowledge of it to prolong our lives for centuries now. But each new breakthrough is more expensive and solves fewer problems. We are pushing the envelope of life, but it will never be cheap, and the best treatments will always be limited (for a brief time) to the powerful and rich.
Research will reduce the cost of health care, not government rationed care. A strong economy will boost research and the ability to buy health care, not endless taxes and deficits. The system has and will always cover all in need. We are Americans, we do not allow people to suffer needlessly. Invest in America’s entrepreneurial spirit and creativity, stop relying on the bumbling idiots in DC – they have never been up to such a task as this, they always outsource to America and its bottomless ingenuity.
Their is no emergency in our health care system – outside the fact Medicaid (the program the fools in DC want us to expand) is going broke, and Medicare is facing the baby boomers and their expensive end of life health care costs. We need to fix these problems, not blow $830 billion dollars on another liberal fantasy. This wild scheme does nothing for these looming problems, and probably makes them worse.
Remember how well it all went with that liberal fantasy about how the government could stimulate the economy through spending on infrastructure projects? Better than the proven method of broad tax cuts, was the claim.
It was a complete failure, because it was based on a fictional, feel-good sound bite. Same situation here. There is no free lunch. Stick with what we got, those egomaniacal ignoramuses in DC have no prayer of cooking up anything better. It will always come out worse.
BTW, if the DC ignoramuses want to know what if feels like to be unemployed come November 2010, keep putting out BS to the public and threatening to ‘fix’ health care.
According to Fox News surveys, the number of independents who oppose health-care reform hit 57% at the end of September, up from 33% in July. Independents are generally a quarter of the vote in off-year congressional elections.
Among college graduates, opposition to health-care reform is now 50%, while only 33% support it, according to Gallup’s Sept. 24 poll. College graduates are slightly more than a quarter of the off-year electorate.
Among seniors, opposition to ObamaCare hit 63% in last month’s Economist/YouGov Poll. But the number from that poll that should spook Democrats is this: 47% of seniors said they “strongly” oppose health-care reform, just 27% “strongly” support it. Seniors are the biggest consumers of health care, and their family members will probably take their concerns seriously. Seniors will likely cast about 20% of the votes next year.
The trend behind these numbers is that voters are turning away from Democrats.
As Darth Vader said to his son Luke at the end of the last Star Wars Movie: “nothing can stop that now”.
Update: I am clearly not the only bemused by all the ridiculous hoopla and quaking.
Update: First we have mythical magical liberal policies that will change the world to Nirvana. Then we got mythical jobs ‘created or saved’ not just claimed, but added into the unemployment figures. We are fed a mythical deficit reduction ten years from now. And to top it all off the AP thinks President Obama has the support of a mythical silent majority on health care!
Man, there is some crazy mind blowing stuff in the DC water these days. I think DC should be changed to stand for “Delusional & Clueless“. Truth in advertising and all that, you know.
[Note: for a short time I had the wrong total cost, so corrected that and fixed all the math based on it]
You want more people insured, so you tax insurance companies? Really, only in Washington DC!
Thanks AJ for some common sense. The bums that would vote for this need to be throw from office at a minimum!
Alas, it is a tough thing to do with the way they have entrenched themselves via perks and incumbant advatages.
Senator Harkin is one of mine and I know well that he is fearless in defending the Public option and have written him often always getting a defense back though he refused townhalls on the subject.
Last time I signed off with
“Senator Harkin, you Sir are either an ignoramous, a liar, an incompetent buffoon or all three and no matter which you are I will do my utmost to defeat you!”
He gets his power from the liberal side of my state, the side with the cities, the colleges and where all the state tax funds go!
He will still hear from me, I will fight these lying cowards until the day they kill me and I hope others do to! We owe it to our kids and grandkids.
I’m mad and not going to take it anymore from either party!
It is $829 billion not $830 billion. And this is the biggest con job ever tried anywhere anytime except communism.
How do you reduce the deficit by $81 billion when you spend $829 billion? Answer: you raise taxes by $910 billion. Like kathie said above: you tax insurance companies. You tax people who don’t have insurance. You tax anything that moves.
$910 billion tax increase in the middle of the great recession!!! What are these people thinking???? Will that be great for the recovery???????
Supplement: The tax increases are scored at $506 billion. Medicare spending is cut by $404 billion And the farce of the whole thing is that the tax increases and spending cuts are scored over 10 years but the program expenditures are scored for only 7 years.
What will this bill cost in years 11-20? How are they going to cut medicare by $404 billion without a cutting services? Death panels anyone?
Kathie is right: there is a $6 billion tax increase on health insurance providers. There is a $4 billion tax increase on Medical Device manufacturers. No wonder Medtronic has come out against ObamaCare.
Mark:
They also ignored the fact that the benefits do not kick in until 2013, but the taxes start right away…that means that for their ten year projection, they had 3 years with money coming and none going out..the next 10 years will be a different story.
Medicare had 40 years of my money coming in before I drew one red cent, and they are going broke. This new plan should work out really well. Nancy wants to put a “wind fall” tax on insurance companies, big pharma, and medical devices. Now that will make everything cheaper. She claims she is worried about job creation. How stupid can you be?
Yesterday I did some research on what it would cost to Medically insure a couple, nonsmoking, healthy. A PPO, with a $7500 deductible was $97.00 a month. It had a $7 million ceiling, offered 3 doctor visits a year for each, co-pay $30.00 and other wellness benefits. This insurance is cheaper then my house insurance, then my property tax, a little more then insuring 2 cars, is cheaper then my supplemental medicare insurance. Yes it doesn’t cover everything, but it is very affordable……..what is the problem?
I saw this at Hot Air, from Ed Morrisey:
Yesterday, the CBO scored the Baucus “concept†and gave a preliminary analysis that it would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over 10 years. However, the CBO insisted that this was only a conceptual analysis, as none of the Baucus plan has been translated into legislative language as of yet. Until the legislative language exists, the CBO cannot properly score its impact.
The CBO relied on a couple of flawed assumptions in making that conceptual analysis. It took at face value Baucus’ notion that an excise tax on insurers offering “Cadillac plans†would raise over $201 billion in revenue, although it did shorten that by over $50 billion in the ten year period. As I have written before, that tax will push insurers to drop those plans to avoid the excise tax — and even if they didn’t, the insurers would have to hike premiums so high to cover that cost that no one would buy the plans. The House has insisted that they will not vote for this tax in any case, which leaves Baucus two different ways to not get that revenue.
However, Baucus has also included a little sleight-of-hand in this scenario. While the program itself would not start until 2013, the taxes start in 2010. That means the CBO compared seven years of expenses to ten years of revenue, which hardly makes for an apples-to-apples comparison, and will likely mean that the real analysis — which will contain a projection for the second decade as well as the first — will look much less positive for Baucus.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the government will receive the following revenues in the three years preceding the implementation of his plan:
* 2010 – $8 billion
* 2011 – $10.3 billion
* 2012 – $10.9 billion
That comprises almost $30 billion of the so-called savings from the CBO conceptual analysis. (Big thanks to Keith Hennessey for the link to the Senate document.) If that revenue fails to meet expectations, it will impact the entire ten-year scope of the project, not just the $30 billion head start it gets in the first three years. Plus, it’s worth noting that these taxes will get paid not by the insurers, but by consumers in higher premium prices as the costs spiral out of sight. This does not reduce the costs in the system, but increases them and shifts them around to keep them opaque to the taxpayer — which is the actual problem we face with health-care costs.
kathie:
Not all states let you buy that kind of insurance, that is part of the problem. My understanding is that under Obamacare, there will be no high deductible plans. They want specific kinds of plans. So much for the promise, that you can keep your insurance if you like it.
Terrye…..I agree, I live in Colorado, we have 5 or 6 different insurance companies that we can look at. I was quoting from Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Colorado, actually looking for an affordable plan for my daughter and her husband.
kathie:
For young people those plans are good, they really are. And so are Health Savings Accounts.
According to Ed Morrisey, there are also failsafe mechanisms in the plan that will reduce subsidies once costs get to a certain place, that means that over time the costs of premiums will go up.
THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL
The internet is alive with the sound of people analyzing the CBO’s “scoring” of the Max Baucus aka Senate Finance Committee Health Care Bill. Before everyone gets too deeply into their thoughts, please keep in mind the following (get ready, all CAPS, bold, indented signifies a really important concept):
THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.
The CBO scored the concepts described by the Baucus Committee. There is no legislative text. None. Baucus and his Democratic colleagues refused to reduce their concepts to actual legislation prior to a vote. Here is the CBO’s disclaimer:
CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.
The actual legislation will be drafted in secret by Harry Reid and a few other people, including staffers whose names and political connections you never will know, and the resulting legislation will be rammed through the Senate and House before anyone gets to read and analyze it.
Months of debate mean nothing. It’s all smoke and mirrors by people who think you are too stupid to realize what is going on.
Read the full article:
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/10/there-is-no-baucus-bill.html
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If the Baucus bill is vaporbill, how the heck did the CBO come out with the numbers?
The Republicans had better NOT vote on vapor bills.
RedState seems to think that the Republicans are capitulating to Obamacare.
The vote on Baucus’ bill is tomorrow?
The Democrats have one single answer to every single problem on the planet: “spend more money”. If only problems were that simple.
Off topic.
I got into a discussion with someone on the Founding Fathers and “foreign entanglements”.
This someone is an isolationist. I believe in participation of peace, harmony, commerce, and honest relationship. I don’t believe in spreading our values to other countries but I believe in war against those countries that pose threats against our country.
To me, “Foreign entanglements” are spats between children, iow, spats between countries. We can trade with both but we don’t take sides.
And I think that is what our Founding Fathers meant.
If that is the case, then that’s a whole lotta different from invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
What do you think?
I don’t believe that the FFs believed in isolationism. I believed that they believed in good and honest relationship, peace, harmony, and commerce. And that they will get involved militarily as part of national security.
What is the big deal about isolationism? Seems that Ron Paul raised attention to it as his philosphy and many people believe him.