You remember Obamacare. The plan to save health care, not add one dime to the deficit, provide "affordable" health insurance for everyone while allowing the Jews to stay in Palestine.
It seems there is a glitch in the President sales pitch. The longer the CBO looks at Obamacare the more it looks like Obamacrap.
On Wednesday CBO Chief Elmendorf spoke at a conference on health care hosted by the Institute of Medicine. According to Senor Elmendorf, the cost estimates for Obamacrap are off by just a bit.
“The rising costs of health care will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond,” said Elmendorf. “In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure.”
What causes this tremendous pressure on the federal budget?
An aging population (especially rising baby boomer's) and the failure of Obamacrap to control health care costs.
Dealing with the first problem is theoretically easy, but politically difficult: raising the retirement age and/or means-testing Medicare benefits.
In other words, move the goal posts by making seniors wait beyond age 65 before they can access Medicare.
The other is to deny successful seniors access to something they have paid for all their lives.
Yeah, that will go over real well.
The second problem, that of controlling the cost of health care is not as easy. According to CBO Chief Elmendorf, "it is not clear what specific policies would translate the potential for significant cost savings into reality.”"
In other words, they have no idea how to control the cost of health care.
A more realistic analysis by PriceWaterhouseCoopers projects that in 2019, because of Obamacare, the average household will pay an additional $9,500 per year for health insurance, on top of the increases caused by conventional health inflation. For a family making $75,000, that is like a hidden income tax of 13 percent, on top of all the other taxes we already pay.
There they go. The folks at PWC want to confuse the issue with realistic projections.
Of course there is no place for realism when Washington is trying to sell us a pig in a poke.
Thanks to Henry Stern for the tip!