Health-care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds

Health-care law will add $340 billion to deficit, new study finds.

www.washingtonpost.com

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade...

The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous, a conservative policy analyst whom Obama approved in 2010 as the GOP trustee for Medicare and Social Security. The study is set to be released Tuesday by Charles Blahous...

(visit the link for the full news article)

So much for O'bummers money-saving health care plan. The article goes on to explain,

The 2010 law does generate both savings and revenue. But much of that money will flow into the Medicare hospitalization trust fund — and, under law, the money must be used to pay years of additional benefits to those who are already insured. That means those savings would not be available to pay for expanding coverage for the uninsured.

So under the current proposal, the money to insure the uninsured Americans in this country would have to be used for those who already have insurance...

Catch-22?

Under current laws, it can't be used to cover the uninsured. So why push a bill through that would add a third of a trillion dollars to our already unrealistic debt?

Because by the time it comes to pay it, Obama won't be in office anymore. So why should he care? It makes him look like a saint while passing the bill on to our kids.

Par for the course I guess. I hope America wakes up soon and realizes we are being screwed from both sides. Why do we even still believe in this two party circus?

Screw republican and democrat. Screw black, white, asian, latino, and muslim. Time for people to realize we are all AMERICANS and to start working for what's best for this country... Not what is best for the special interest groups...

*Rant over*



www.washingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by YouAreLiedTo


Whether or not its a 1 dollar program or a 1 trillion dollar program its going to add to the deficit because we are currently spending more money than we take in. That type of math comes from the 1st grade so apparently people in government must have been sick the day they taught addition and subtraction in school.

Easy fix - Quit spending money on useless crap we don't need. Live within our means and budget to the point where if we have to cut back then we have to cut back.

Easier to fix the mess now rather than hoping the US hits the lottery down the ord.

I'll take common sense for $500 Alex.....

reply to post by YouAreLiedTo


Obama's administration already more or less admitted this. Somehow it did not become big news. Maybe because democrats control the media. Luckily it wont matter as the supreme court is going to overturn it.

And yet, this supposed "HEALTH" care plan doesn't address the very real concerns about hydroxyhexanal. The word "hydroxyhexanal" doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the legislation (check for yourself!) even though it is totally unregulated and its effects are very well known.

You can read more about hydroxyhexanal in this infographic:

a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net...

Healthcare certainly is a problem in this country, and Obamacare is most certainly not the solution.



The entire idea of health insurance itself is flawed - Stossel's special (from 2009 I think) explains it pretty well. It's a big scam that people feel they need to participate in (the main reason being that everyone else's participation drives prices so high that it makes it a necessity), and the government is trying to force all of us to do so.

The real solution is exposing the health insurance industry for what it is, and get people to just stop buying it.

And it would be another dent in Obama's ObamaCare "promise" as well !!


He Really made that point didn't he !!

President Obama promised in 2009 that he would not sign a health care plan that “adds one dime to” to federal deficit, but a new study being criticized by the White House says that's exactly what ObamaCare will do.

[color=cyan]“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future,” the president said at a joint session of Congress. “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.

New study shows ObamaCare increases deficit, knocking down president's vow

"PERIOD" !!

Too bad the Washington Post (and the OP) fell for this. Sigh.

Source

You may wonder what methods Blahous used to obtain a more accurate measure of the bill’s cost. The answer is that he relies on a simple conceptual trick. Medicare Part A has a trust fund. By law, the trust fund can’t spend more than it takes in. So Blahous assumes that, when the trust fund reaches its expiration, it would automatically cut benefits. The assumption is important because it forms the baseline against which he measures Obama’s health-care law. He’s assuming that Medicare’s deficits will automatically go away. Therefore, the roughly $500 billion in Medicare savings that Obama used to help cover the uninsured is money that Blahous assumes the government wouldn’t have spent anyway. Without the health-care law, in other words, we would have had Medicare cuts but no new spending on the uninsured. Now we have the Medicare cuts and new spending on the uninsured. Therefore, the new spending in the law counts toward increasing the deficit, but the spending cuts don’t count toward reducing it.

That is a completely bizarre assumption. It’s not an assumption that any scoring agency ever applies in other situations. We assume that, in the absence of action, Congress will keep paying Medicare benefits. That’s why we have all these projections of future deficits. If Blahous’s assumptions are right, then we don’t really have an entitlement problem at all. Medicare can’t exceed its trust fund, so problem solved! You know how Paul Ryan has been stalking the halls of Congress with disaster-movie music in the backdrop, warning that we’re about to become Greece? He should relax! (Also, Blahous’s methodology would show that Ryan’s budget looks way worse, too.)

And now a White House blog is rebutting...

Official Sources Agree: The Affordable Care Act Reduces the Deficit

We'll just do this trim the military; we'll specifically cut the F22 & F35 funding. Neither have, nor will they ever, pan out. We'll also trim that excess military budget which only lines the coffers of rich white guys.

We'll have health care for all and there still will be no air force that can match us for air superiority or navy on the sea or army on the ground... of course the rich white guys in the MIC might be a little sad due to the loss of their cash cows.

That was easier than voting for DWTS. Where's something hard to tackle?

Derek