Friday, November 06, 2009

A Tale of Two Bills: Show Me the Money

Let's put aside for a moment whether ObamaCare (that is, the Senate version -such as it is - and PelosiCare) includes coverage for abortions (it does) or Death Panels (it does), and focus instead on actual costs. According to the Congressional Budget Office, "in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion." [emphasis in original]

And just to drive home the point that Granny's been thrown unceremoniously under the bus, PelosiCare includes some $800 billion in Medicare cuts, which is trumped only by the Senate version's $900 billion reduction. No more cookies for you guys.

For those keeping score, those $2 trillion price tags are almost double what the Majority Leader and the Speaker have previously claimed. I'm reminded of something an old sage once observed.

Contrast those ginormous numbers with this one: "a gross cost of $61 billion that is partly offset by about $52 billion in additional revenues associated with the coverage provisions." Those provisions include such outrageous schemes as tort reform and interstate sale of insurance (Full Disclosure: Bob maintains, and I agree, that this particular change will result in premium reductions for, at best, a very short time).

Lets compare those numbers: almost $2 trillion vs about $61 billion.

To be fair, Obamacare proponents will claim, justifiably, that the so-called Boehner Amendment cited above results in about 85% of the population being insured, while their efforts would result in some 95% covered. What they won't tell you is that their 95% includes illegal aliens (it does), which account for about 20% of the 15% of the uninsured; this means that ObamaCare and BoehnerCare are within about 5% of each other with regard to covering the uninsured.

As to how much they'll cost, well, do the math.
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