Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Obama Math

Health care reform is supposed to guarantee health insurance to roughly 36 million Americans over the next 10 years at a cost of $1 trillion or more.

In simple terms, that is $100 billion per year for 10 years. That averages out to just under $2800 per individual per year . . . IF you believe their numbers.

So how does Professor Obama score on his math abilities so far?

According to Reuters, the Obama administration has spent (or invested, depending on your perspective) $158 billion to create or save 640,329 jobs.

Ignore for the moment that not all of those were real jobs created or saved. Some were only temporary jobs that lasted a few weeks. Some were not jobs at all but rather the money was spent to give raises to people who already had jobs. And it was recently reported that Columbus schools spent $145,000 to rent banquet halls and conference rooms in "high end" hotels to train existing teachers on how to teach.

This in spite of the fact they own 120 buildings that are designed for . . . teaching.

They are also spending $1.4 million to pay speakers for this 3 day session.

But back to the jobs created or saved.

640 thousand jobs.

$158 billion.

That's $246,000 per job created or saved.

Total compensation earned by the average payroll employee during October, on an annualized basis, was $59,867. If the government had simply used the funds awarded so far to pay for a year’s worth of labor, that would have paid for 2.6mn jobs!


So much for government efficiency.

Will someone please tell me how a government that spends that much money to save or create so few jobs will suddenly become an efficient machine at delivering quality health care for all at a lower cost than what we have now?
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