Steven Birn
Steven Birn Speaks
In 1965 when Congress passed Medicare the pols sold it as something that wouldn’t be particularly costly.
They said in 1990 Medicare would only cost $12 billion, which included an allowance for inflation. When 1990 rolled around the program cost $107 billion or 9 times the estimate. In 2010 Medicare cost taxpayers $523 billion. When Obamacare was passed the Democrats told us it would cost $900 billion over 10 years, or $90 billion a year. This week the CBO doubled their estimate of Obamacare’s cost to just under $1.8 trillion over a decade. Keep in mind, Obamacare doesn’t even fully take effect until 2014.
Is anyone surprised by this news? You can bet that in a year or two the CBO will tell us it will cost twice their current estimate and still no one would be surprised. Congress routinely pulls this stunt wherein they claim that their programs will only cost a little bit of money but once everything is passed suddenly it costs twice as much. The Republicans foolishly passed the Rx drug bill in 2003 and magically the next year the cost estimate had doubled. It will end up costing taxpayers four times as much as we were told when the bill was going through Congress.
Obamacare isn’t going to cut any costs and is going to cost taxpayers a fortune. Everyone knew that when it was passed, even the Democrats who lied about it being a cost savings program. Obamacare isn’t anything more than an intermediate step toward outright socialist healthcare controlled by the government. The Democrats still aren’t honest about that. But then when a party spends the better part of a year telling the public Obamacare won’t cost taxpayers much and will be an overall cost savings truth isn’t exactly important.
Yesterday, I discussed how America has become a regulation nation with hundreds of thousands of pages of Federal and state laws and regulations dictating our every move. Obamacare’s cost isn’t going to be seen in simply financial terms. It will also be seen in the 10,000 plus pages of regulations being created by the Obama administration. These regulations will dictate every healthcare action we take. The financial cost of Obamacare is staggering, the Democrats clearly lied about how much the law was going to cost. A substantial portion of the cost is going to be seen in the regulatory world where bureaucrats will obtain the power to control our health. Ultimately we won’t be able to opt out when the Democrats seal the deal and move us into a fully socialist health system.
The CBO estimates that 4 million people will lose insurance from their employer by 2016. That’s a direct result of the regulations created by Obamacare, both by the act itself and by regulations promulgated by the administration. The cost of health insurance is high as it is, Obamacare is making matters worse. Insurance premiums skyrocketed after Obamacare, in an industry that averages a profit of barely 2%. The increased prices aren’t paying dividends for the owners of health insurance stock, the increased prices are paying for compliance with Obamacare.
We knew Obamacare was going to be a mess when it was passed. We knew it wasn’t going to cost $90 billion a year and we knew it was cause health insurance premiums to skyrocket. We knew that the regulations created by Obamacare would give the Federal government vast power over our personal lives. All we can do now is pray that the Supreme Court would rule Obamacare unconstitutional and if Mitt Romney is the nominee, hold him to his promise to repeal Obamacare if he’s elected.
Steven Birn is an attorney and conservative political junkie and blogger. For more news and commentary visit Steven Birn Speaks.
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