Obamacare to cost 2 trillion, a ticking time bomb

CBO: Obamacare Would Cost Over $2 Trillion

March 18, 2010 6:36 PM

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-would-cost-over-2-trillion

The CBO's most recent analysis is out, and it's not likely to convince wavering House Democrats to jump to the Obamacare side of the fence.  Even the Democrats are granting that the latest version of their proposed health care overhaul would cost $69 billion more than the previous version.  According to the CBO, this version would siphon even more money out of Medicare, make even further cuts to Medicare Advantage, and levy even higher taxes and fines on the American people.

President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their allies, are cheerfully citing "ten year" costs of $940,000,000,000.00 — apparently believing this to be a far more palatable figure than $1 trillion.  But even this colossal tally is like the introductory price quoted by a cell phone provider.  It's the price before you pay for minutes, fees, and overcharges — and before the price balloons after the introductory offer expires. 

For a variety of reasons, this tally doesn't remotely reflect the bill's real ten-year costs.  First, it includes 2010 as the initial year.  As most people are well aware, 2010 has now been underway for some time.  Therefore, the CBO would normally count 2011 as the first year of its analysis, just as it counted 2010 as the first year when analyzing the initial House health bill in the middle of 2009.  But under strict instructions from Democratic leaders, and over strong objections from Republicans, the CBO dutifully scored 2010 as the first year of the latest version of Obamacare.  If the clock were started in 2011, the first full year that the bill could possibly be in effect, the CBO says that the bill's ten-year costs would be $1.2 trillion.

But even that wouldn't come close to reflecting the bill's true costs.  The CBO projects that over the next four years, less than two percent of the bill's alleged "ten year" costs would hit:  just $17 billion of the $940 billion in costs that the Democrats are claiming.  In fact, the costs through President Obama's entire presidency, should he be reelected, would be $336 billion.  What would the president leave behind for his successor?  According to the CBO, he would leave behind costs of $837 billion during his successor's first term alone.  If his successor were to serve a second term, he or she would inherit a cool $2.0 trillion in Obamacare costs — about six times its costs during Obama's own tenure.  This legislation is a ticking time-bomb.