Health Bill Substantially Increases Costs

It has been sickening in the health care debate to watch so many Democrats parrot the claim that the Congressional Budget Office has found that the health reform legislation will reduce the cost of healthcare.  Everybody knows that the CBO numbers are based on the provisions of the bill submitted, which contain numerous devices designed to produce the CBO result, even though they are unrealistic projections.  A recent article in the New York Times has spelled this out.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21holtz-eakin.html?scp=3&sq=Real%20cost%20%20%20%20%20Health%20care&st=cse.  The article, entitled "The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform", by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, spells out the gimmicks and regulatory games used to produce the CBO scores.  Primary among these was the inclusion of ten years of revenue and only six years of costs in the CBO estimate, but there are numerous others, including games with corporate tax payments.  Douglas-Eakins doesn't even mentiont the"Doc-fix".  This is the more than $200 billion required to eliminate the scheduled cut in Medicare payments to doctors that would result from a formula created in legislation in 1997.  This is an essential element of the health reform bill that was in the original House bill, but because it was moved into a separate piece of legislation, Democrats claim that it doesn't have to be counted in the cost of the health reform package.  It's amazing how they can say this with a straight face.  We are in for higher costs, higher taxes, and reduced service for Medicare patients.


The reconciliation bill is particularly harsh on Medicare Advantage programs, cutting $202 billion from the program used by 25% of all seniors. http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=174426  Medicare Advantage payments will be frozen in 2011, but will feel the full brunt of the decrease in 2012, after the 2012 election.  This will obviously make Medicare Advantage plans much less attractive, since it will eliminate any financial advantage that they now have over traditional Medicare.  The Democrats will achieve their goal of eliminating private insurance company competition with the traditional Medicare program.