Quote
Originally posted by: DonDiegoQuote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
And show me the math that refutes the bi-partisan CBO's financial assessment of the new healthcare law over the system that came before it. The only people who say the old system was better for the deficit are the same ones who said the Iraq War would be paid for with oil revenues...and they admitedly have not scored the bill independantly (in other words - they are making it up)
Well, . . . allow DonDiego to address the accuracy of the CBO estimate first:
item i_ Not very long after the CBO report was issued the accuracy of its predictions was challenged by opponents of ObamaCare on the basis that many of the assumptions leading to those predictions were likely to be incorrect. The CBO response was that they operate at the pleasure of the Congress; they can only assess a program based upon what Congress tells them to base the assessment upon.
i.e. The CBO did as it was told. If he chooses, the reader can look this up as an exercise.
Item ii__So, . . . in fact, on May 11 2010 “the CBO . . . released a new estimate of how much additional discretionary spending — on implementation costs, further subsidies for new and existing programs, etc. — health care reform is likely to generate over the first 10 years. The total comes to $115 billion above and beyond the official price tag, a sum that would almost wipe out the bill’s projected deficit savings in the first decade.”
Ref: NYTimes
item iii__But allow poor old DonDiego to get a bit further into the math, or at least some more numbers. One of the assumptions upon which the CBO did base their analysis was that the “Doc Fix” would be implemented in 2011. For those unfamiliar with the “Doc Fix”, it is, . . . or
was, . . . the plan to reduce Medicare reimbursement to physicians by 21% or 25% - depending where one reads it - in June of 2011. (For the record, this exact “fix” was one of the assumptions referred to in item i above as unlikely to pan out as presented to the CBO for analysis.) On 9 December the NY Times and other newspapers reported that
low and behold ! ! ! “The House [of Representatives] gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that would avert a 25% cut in Medicare payments to doctors by freezing reimbursement rates at current levels until the end of next year [2011].”
Ref: NYTimes
OK! Here’s the math: Assuming the “Doc Fix” reductions are not implemented, the additional cost to the Government will be between $250-billion and $400-billion over a decade, thereby wiping out
all projected ObamaCare savings.
item iv__Hey, there’s more ! One of the provisions of ObamaCare fines employers who drop employee health care plans. Well, many companies are figuring out it’d be a lot cheaper for them to drop the health care plans and pay the fine, and let their employees join the Government health care exchanges. Now lots of liberals sorta like this, . . . it’s a step toward the total government plan they’d’ve preferred in the first place. But pjstroh asked for math:
“What does it mean for health care reform if the employer-sponsored regime collapses? By
Fortune’s reckoning, each person who’s dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO.”
Ref: NYTimes
Oh, about pjstroh’s assertion: “The only people who say the old system was better for the deficit are the same ones who said the Iraq War would be paid for with oil revenues.” , . . . well, DonDiego says the old system would cost the government less,
i.e. lower the deficit, and has
never said the Iraq War would be paid for with oil revenues. pjstroh is proven wrong.
QED
