Pelosi's Health Care Bill: Half a Billion Dollars a Page

Will Malven
10/30/2009

Sooo...somebody do the math, please! Half a billion dollars/page...that's $500,000,000 for each and every page (give or take a page or two). Of course that's the projected cost over 10 years, so let's say $50,000,000 per page per year. To put that into perspective, if a rich person is defined as those making over $250,000/year, then each page could make 200 of the 4 million newly unemployed a rich person, or 400,000 newly created "rich persons."

Of course we know that the true cost, the cost that the other idiot in charge of the other House in our Legislative Branch, Harry Reid, let slip in a moment of senility was $2 Trillion over 10 years or twice as much as Congress is willing to admit to. That brings us up to 800,000 "rich persons" who could be created by simply giving away this money.

Carry it even farther. If $50,000/year is the average annual income, then suddenly we would have 4,000,000 new jobs, each guaranteed for 10 years. Wow, just think if we were to do that then each of those people could afford to buy their own insurance through their employers.

Think about it...4 million newly employed all of them insured and paying both federal income tax and social security taxes.

Of course the fifty thou they were earning would be worth about twenty thousand after inflation kicked in...which is of course the whole point of this exercise. WE DON'T HAVE 2 TRILLION DOLLARS TO SPEND LIKE THIS!!!

Back to Pelosi's plan. The CBO claims that the ultimate cost of this plan will be roughly $1.055 Trillion and then they go through some mental "matherbation" (they assume that $161 Billion will be generated by penalties assessed on those who don't sign up for insurance- 1055 - 161 = 894) to get the sum down to $894 Billion which is, amazingly enough, $6 Billion below President Obama's promised $900 Billion limit...funny how that worked out.

Problem is, we all know that these numbers are completely bogus. The Heritage Foundation has the "low-down" on the historical accuracy of congressional cost estimates for the sort of social programs that Democrats seem to like so much here and their record is not very reassuring:

"In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990.v Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.”

Whoops! Better make that check out for a bit more than Congress is lying telling us.

It gets better folks:

"Medicare (entire program). In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10."

WOW! So like...we could expect this "$1 Trillion program which actually costs $2 Trillion to cost more like $20 Trillion? I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like a lot of money to me.

That's just for Medicare, how about Medicaid?

Medicaid DSH program. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid’s disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments—which states use to provide relief to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured patients—would cost less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was a staggering $17 billion.

That's 1700% people. Congress and the much touted CBO were off by a factor of 17. What happens if they have made the same mistakes today as they made back then?

Think about what this means. Under optimistic assumption, especially given the record of the current economy, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the United States in 10 years is projected to be around $16.5 Trillion. Our current GDP is $13.3 Trillion current national debt is $11.9 Trillion (ummm that'a a net positive of $1.4 Trillion). Congress is about to add "$1.055 Trillion" and very probably several times that, given their historical record for accuracy, for health care alone...UH-OH America just went bankrupt.

Madame Speaker asserts (along with her fellow liberals) that Democrats are pursuing the passage of this bill "to provide competition" and force insurance companies to control health care costs and to insure the estimated 40 million 30 million uninsured, whom we are told are dying for lack of insurance, which is of course total poppycock as no one in America goes without treatment unless they choose to.

You want competition, there are 1700 insurance companies in America. The only reason there isn't any competition is because the governments of each state have legislated monopolies for certain insurance companies, thus according to the GAO in Texas there are 46 providers with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas being the largest holding 27% of the market and the top 5 companies holding 68% of the market. We're in pretty good shape compared to other states like Alabama in which one company, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama holds a whopping 96% of the health insurance market.

There's not much competition in Alabama, so instead of offering just one other option, the "public option," why not simply pass a federal law allowing people to buy their insurance from any provider anywhere in the United States? Instead of giving citizens one alternative, they would be given 1700 alternatives...and here's the kicker, it wouldn't cost a dime of taxpayer money to do this.

The sad truth is, the reason Democrats in Congress won't deregulate the insurance industry is that this whole sham isn't about providing better, cheaper medical care, it is about accruing more power to the federal government. It is about destroying the private insurance industry and forcing citizens to rely more on the federal government for their "welfare."

Anyone who denies that this is an effort to destroy the private insurance industry is lying...flat out. NO if's, and's, or but's about it. They are intentionally attempting to deceive the American people. You cannot have "competition" where one of the "competitors" has unlimited resources on which to draw and does not have to make a profit. Madame Speaker Pelosi claims that this public option will not have an unfair advantage:

“It should be actuarially sound. It should be administrative and self-sufficient. It should be a real competitor with the private sector and not have an unfair advantage.”

Is anybody reading this dumb enough to believe that the government won't step in and assist this "public option" in the event that is shows signs of not competing? Is anyone gullible enough to believe that this plan will not have a built in financial advantage? How many companies, insurance or otherwise, do you know of that do not ever have to worry about failing?

This is the "thin end of the wedge" of "single payer" socialized medicine. It is a large step in America's continuing slide towards becoming another European style socialist state complete with all of the economic difficulties and "shared sacrifices" with which Europeans have been "blessed."

This isn't just a pig in a poke, it is a rotting, festering, decaying porcine corpse and Democrats want you to buy it without even getting your "poke." Only you can stop this monstrosity...only you can exert sufficient pressure on members of Congress to stop this rape of the American health care system and of the America electorate.

Contact your members of Congress...do it repeatedly and do it to all of them, left or right. Make certain they know exactly how you feel and stop this train before it picks up any steam.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

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