The Actual Cost Of The Healthcare Bill In The Senate

According to today’s New York Post, the numbers we are hearing bandied about on the latest healthcare proposal are not quite revealing the entire picture.  According to the article:

“The Democrats cite the bills’ projected costs from 2010-19. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, the bill would cost just $9 billion total from 2010 through 2013 — versus $147 billion in 2016 alone. In the first 40 percent of what the Democrats are calling the bill’s “first 10 years,” only 1 percent of its costs would yet have hit.

“As the CBO analysis indicates, the bill’s real 10-year costs would start in 2014. And in its true first decade (2014 to 2023), CBO projects the bill’s costs to be $1.8 trillion — double the price Reid is advertising.”
 

The trick here is very simple.  If you beging to collect taxes to pay for healthcare starting in 2010 and don’t actually let the full program kick in until 2014, you have three years of taxes without services to make the overall cost of the bill appear lower.

The other major problem with Senator Reid’s healthcare bill is how it impacts cuts in doctors’ pay.  The article states, “The bill says it would cut payments to doctors for services to Medicare patients by 23 percent in 2011 — and never raise them back up, ever.”  If you were a doctor, would you be taking any more Medicare patients?

This is a bad bill and should be stopped in the Senate.  The bill that needs to be put forth will include tort reform, portability of health insurance across state lines, insurance pools for pre-existing conditions, and tax breaks to help lower income people afford health insurance.  None of these items are included in the present proposal.  We need less government interference in healthcare–not more.