Avik Roy, a savvy health care analyst in New York City who writes an excellent blog on health policy, took the time to talk with me for The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News podcast about what we learned last week when it comes to the White House’s fraudulent case for Obamacare.
In case you missed it — because for some reason, the Washington media types didn’t find time to cover this story — Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf offered an astounding rejection of the notion that the new health care regime, which President Obama frequently cited as a profound and necessary deficit-lowering measure, does anything to improve America’s deficit picture.
This is less news to you, of course. But it’s newsworthy because of who’s saying it. As Keith Hennessey put it, “Never before have I seen a CBO Director so bluntly refute the policy claims of a President and his Budget Director.”
Despite the best efforts of OMB chief Peter Orszag and others, the spin that Obamacare was a budgetary cure has already been revealed as a complete falsehood, even before the implementation costs of the vast majority of its policies are fully known. As Roy writes:
At this point, there are only two camps of honest people: those who believe Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is a problem; and those who believe that Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is not a problem (because wealth redistribution is more important, and because the wealthy can be taxed more if needed).
The more we learn about what is in this bill, the more we see how disastrous it will be for this country, and how wrongheaded its approach is to solving our health care problems.
Read more at Health Care News.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
Hypocrisy
banzaibob (Diary) Monday, June 7th at 10:54AM EST (link)The government want its citizens to act ethically as well as private business. But our government chooses to act as it pleases to accomplish its own agenda. This has been a fraud from the start and anybody voted for it should be voted out of office.
Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas
It’s better to die upon your feet than to live upon your knees!
Emiliano Zapata
Yet Obama was allowed to say this in March
partyof1 Monday, June 7th at 11:00AM EST (link)virtually without challenge from the media:
President lauds CBO numbers on healthcare
By Sam Youngman – 03/18/10
The healthcare package scored by the Congressional Budget Office will significantly reduce the deficit, President Barack Obama said Thursday.
“That makes this the most significant effort to reduce the deficit since the balanced budget act of the 1990s,” he said, lauding the new CBO numbers.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/87609-obama-lauds-cbo-numbers-on-healthcare
Even as the former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin unloaded on Obamacare with The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform
I think this misreads the CBO director's comments
fairbanks Monday, June 7th at 12:04PM EST (link)From http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1034: “The projected reductions in budget deficits and in the federal budgetary commitment to health care during the decade beyond the 10-year budget window are steps in the direction of sustainable fiscal policy. However, they are small steps relative to the length of the journey that will be needed to achieve sustainability.”
It seems like Director Elmendorf was saying that Obamacare is a drop in the bucket: it reducing spending, but over an extremely long period of time, and at a rate nowhere near what is necessary.
On a related note, did anyone catch this: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38182.html
Defense spending reform could be part of a huge step towards an actual sane budget.
I am pretending that I never heard that the doc fix was going to be imposed later. This is because I think that the rest of you are stupid.
“… I remember you and recall you without effort, without exercise of will; that is, by natural impulse, indicated by a sense of duty, or of obligation. And that, I take it, is the only sort of remembering worth the having. When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy — that it is built upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”Achieving a Sane Budget
edintexas Tuesday, June 8th at 8:03AM EST (link)Adhering to the Constitutional restrictions on the Federal government would go much farther to achieving a sane budget. We could start with the gradual elimination of Agriculture Crop Subsidies, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (the latter would not only be relief for Federal taxpayers, but state taxes also) and Obamacare (for future liabilities). There would be lots more to be cut, but those are the big things.
A gradual phase out would allow for a limited impact on the existing recipients of this government largess at taxpayer’s expense.
Triple the Cost
pamela1631 (Diary) Monday, June 7th at 3:13PM EST (link)My health care premiums will be going up 300% under Obamacare.
Where is the affordability in that?
This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it. ~~Elmer Davis
I am stone forged from the fires of creation into flesh ~~Pamela1631
The greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.~~Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret.)
Obamacare makes hiring illegals more appealing
lynnbo Tuesday, June 8th at 8:25AM EST (link)One could make the argument that HC makes hiring illegals way more appealing to businesses than American employees. By simply paying the fine or tax to not provide hc, its much cheaper and the illegals move into a state program paid for by you and me.
Many cases such as McDonalds in Nevada paying a 1 million dollar fine for giving illegals new names and social security numbers will really be the smart thing for businesses to do when health care starts.
Americans will loose jobs in the millions and this is why he won’t close the border. This is true wealth redistribution from American citizens to illegals from other countries.