ObamaCare: $1 Trillion Over 10 Years. So, Who Pays?

17 Jun, 2009 by William Teach

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The Congressional Budget Office came out with their assessment of ObamaCare Tuesday, and, it is not pretty

“How are we going to pay for that, Mr. President?” Sen. John McCain has asked.

That one question – how the nation really pays for health reform – just got a shocking wake up call. The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, said Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health care proposal could cost $1 trillion over 10 years and 36 million Americans would still be uninsured.

“It’s a preliminary set of numbers,” said Sen. Chris Dodd.

Democrats called the numbers inconclusive. Even the CBO called its own report incomplete. But the sheer magnitude of what Congress is considering is undeniable, reports CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews.

Now, some folks, including Fox News on air talent, are throwing around that it will cost around $65,000 per person for coverage. If you divide that by 10 years, well, $6,500 per year for health insurance is right there at the cost most companies are looking to keep it to. Heck, quite a few big companies spend way more per year per employee.

However, companies tend to have product which they sell, so they make money. The federal government gets money from…..well, y’all know who’s pocket they take it from. So, how exactly do they pay for it? Raising taxes on the rich? That’s an old one, which never quite works out. The rich (in Lib Speak, that means those that get a pay check) can’t pay for every canard the Democrats propose. So, how else?

President Obama’s plan to expand health coverage to the uninsured is likely to dig the nation deeper into debt unless policymakers adopt politically painful controls on spending, such as sharp reductions in payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers, congressional budget analysts said yesterday.

So, the answer is to raise taxes and cut services. Great! We can be like France, England, Germany, and Canada, and wait for health care when we need it, since, even if we have private insurance, the cuts will affect us, as well.

While popular measures such as increasing preventive care, expanding the use of electronic medical records and rewarding doctors for choosing more effective treatments have the potential to lower costs, “little reliable evidence exists about exactly how to implement those types of changes,” Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas W. Elmendorf said in a letter to Senate budget leaders.

Which begs the question, how exactly are costs going to go down? One of Obama’s talking points in passing ObamaCare is that it will reduce the cost of health care. But he never actually tells us how. Perhaps someone in the Credentialed Media could ask him to provide some substance on that question. Because, from where I am sitting, if all sorts of different taxes are going to go up, seems like my costs are going to go up.