We Can't Afford NOT to Repeal Obamacare

In his new blog post: Obamacare, the CBO, and the downward spiral of statist economics, Glenn Gogoleski makes a few points about Obamacare that we all should keep in mind:

 •$1 trillion cost projection is an underestimate that includes only six rather than 10 years of subsidies; $2.4 trillion is a more accurate cost projection for the first decade.

 •The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act (CLASS)that was built into Obamacare will not generate the $70 billion expected. That idea was scrapped from the original plan. That means more than $70 billion of the supposed 10-year deficit reduction of $123 billion from the original cost estimate is already gone. 

•Spending cuts to Medicare in Obamacare are not real and based upon a flawed premise that Medicare payments to doctors can fall below payments from Medicaid.

 •Double-counting – a heavy reliance on cuts to the Medicare program to pay for the massive entitlement expansions in the legislation. But a large part of the Medicare cuts (and payroll tax increases) is also supposed to pay for future benefits out of the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund. In other words, the savings from the cuts and taxes is spent twice—once on Obamacare’s entitlements and then again to fill a hole in the trust fund so that future Medicare claims can be met. The end result is not deficit reduction, as Obamacare’s apologists claim, but a massive increase in deficit spending over the long term.

 •The CBO assumes that in 2019 only 19 million Americans will receive insurance through the health care exchanges, when in fact most workers will be better off foregoing employer health care coverage, taking cash instead of the benefits, and using Obamacare’s entitlement package for their health care. 

•There’s the $300 billion in physician fees. The Administration scooped up every Medicare cut it could find to pay for Obamacare and then said it wanted to add new physician fee spending to the deficit without any offsets. But just because they tried to keep two sets of books doesn’t mean the deficit won’t go up. It will, as the combined effect of the “doc fix” and Obamacare is unquestionably an increase in the deficit. •Finally, there are the omitted costs. CBO admits that a lot of the costs for administering Obamacare aren’t counted in the original cost estimate. There’s at least $5 billion to $10 billion in Health and Human Services (HHS) spending, and another $5 billion to $10 billion for the IRS. Just this year, HHS asked for an additional $850 million to pay for setting up a federal backup exchange in 2013.

None of these costs are counted in the original cost estimate. As we await the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, it is nice to be reminded of what we were told, compared to the truth which was concealed. RR