Predicting the cost of Obamacare
If the past is any guide, it’s a safe bet that Obamacare will cost far more than estimated. Check this out:
A few years ago, the Senate Joint Economic Committee released a study that looked at initial estimates of programs and their costs in dollars at that time. In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. It was $110 billion. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid’s hospital subsidies were estimated to cost less than $1 billion in 1992. It was $17 billion.
That’s just two of countless examples.
It’s all the Big Dig now.
To top it all off, doctors might be quitting because of Obamacare.
Well, as Pelosi said…
Yes, doctors will be quitting. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, reducing/regulating the amount that doctors can charge for their services doesn’t change the actual cost for them to provide their services (or the overhead cost of things like medical school loans, malpractice insurance, costly HHS mandated software and paperwork, etc.). In Britain, a lot of their doctors have fled, to be replaced by foreign doctors willing to take the reduced compensation for their services. The “cost” will be in the quality of care we receive.
Initial estimates are gotten at by going down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, a thirty minute layover in The Twilight Zone, and an hour’s decompression in the Rube Goldberg room — and then no-one but no-one believes any of it — no-one.
Taking into account only the 2 programs and 1 swindle mentioned in the post, the Crank’s Constant would appear to be 11, that is, all initial estimates should be multiplied by 11.
In a country where almost 50% of people pay no federal income tax, lots of people assume the cost of Obamacare is zero for them.
read as to what Acton t4 allowed
My doctor revealed to me that what Medicare pays him leaves him wth $4 above his actual costs. Is it any wonder doctors can’t/won’t take any more Medicare patients? The progs seem to assume the doctors will do it because it’s the “right thing to do.” Most doctors are small business people. If they can’t make enough money to cover overhead and pay their personal bills, they will have to seek some other way to make a living. I’m thankful that I have a doctor at this point.
An anecdote that may have some bearing on the increased costs ala Obamacare: I have carried Long Term Care (LTC) insurance for my wife and myself since 1990. The premiums were raised once about three years ago – a small, 2% bump up. Yesterday I got a notification that the premium is going up by 30%. Yikes! I’m asking myself if nursing home costs have gone up that much in the last few years. Checked around and found they have not gone up by that much. Why? Because few can pay what they’re asking. My insurer is also in the health care insurance business. They are going to have to raise premiums there because of Obamacare. Methinks they are trying to lay a bit of their costs off on LTC policy holders like me because they know that, at my age, I can’t get a new policy at a price I can afford. So, I’m stuck. Either pay up or lose my insurance and have to rely on Medicaid to pay for a crappy nursing home. (If it comes to that.) At least that’s my reading of the situation. Maybe I’m wrong, but it would be interesting to have people report their health care and LTC premium increases on some kind of a national hot line to get a reading on just how much Obamacare is costing us in that area.
Cost?
To the leftist the cost of not helping people who need help is too great.
To the person with common sense govt has exacerbated cost and probably therefore cost lives and quality for the general people.
The safety net needs to be focused on the elderly and non able bodied. What Obama did was dilute the safety net.
As usual, the “progressives” want everyone to share the poverty. Common sense does not apply. Envy is the key to the “progressive” world view.
Medicare drives up the cost of medicine horrendously. A few years ago my mother fell and was taken to the ER. After an overnight stay it was determined that she hadn’t broken anything. The doctors recommended that she be discharged to a rehab facility rather than home since the fall was caused by weakness in her leg muscles. The problem was that Medicare wouldn’t pay for rehab unless a patient had been in the hospital for three nights. It was no problem, the hospital kept her for extra testing for two more nights at an additional cost of $20,000.
Yep, Obamacare is going to bend the cost curve alright. All those estimates are total nonsense. Since medial care will be free, everyone’s ingenuity will go towards maximizing their own benefits without a care in thhe world about its cost.