It’s time to stop playing along with this ridiculous game called, “The government says the health care bill will cost…” It’s always wrong. And it’s always wrong by underestimating the cost. Why don’t the Republicans point this out? (Probably because they’ve been big government spenders, too.)
Look back at when Medicare was first created:
At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly “conservative” estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.
In 2007, total Medicare spending was $431 billion! That isn’t even close to the costs predicted in 1965. Why do we act like the numbers coming out of Congress and the CBO have any basis in reality?
The predictions for Medicaid were just as wrong:
In 1987, Congress projected that Medicaid – the joint federal-state health care program for the poor – would make special relief payments to hospitals of less than $1 billion in 1992. Actual cost: $17 billion.
The list goes on. The 1993 cost of Medicare’s home care benefit was projected in 1988 to be $4 billion, but ended up at $10 billion. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which was created in 1997 and projected to cost $5 billion per year, has had to be supplemented with hundreds of millions of dollars annually by Congress.
Yet, Obama, Pelosi, etc. tell us with a straight face that this new plan won’t really cost as much as we think. That’s not even counting the smoke and mirrors they’re using on the CBO to come up with their happy deficit reduction numbers.
We don’t know enough to create adequate models to predict the outcomes, the models we do have are being fed flawed data, yet we continue to act like we know what will happen five, ten, twenty and 100 years from now.
Does anyone really believe that Congress can design a health care system that will provide the best care at the lowest cost?
Here is an example of how dumb some of our “leaders” are. Congresswoman Maxine Waters doesn’t even know the difference between the discount rate and the federal funds rate. Watch her make a fool of herself while questioning Ben Bernanke. By the way, she’s on the Financial Services Committee and is on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit! God, help us.
How about getting government out of the way and letting us work this out with our doctors.
1) No mandates on insurance. I choose what I want.
2) I can buy any plan I want from any state.
3) I get the same tax breaks for insurance that my employer gets.
4) I can put as much as I want in my Health Savings Account – tax free – as long as I only spend it on health care.
5) I can pay for routine care out of my HSA and buy a catastrophic insurance plan only.
6) I buy health status insurance so I will always be insurable even if I develop a “pre-existing condition.”
No new government program is necessary. I just saved us a gazillion dollars. You’re welcome. Let’s roll.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.