House health care bill exceeds $1 trillion

[TomCADem]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.

Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill's true cost by $150 billion or more. That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.

The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Some moderate Democrats have expressed reluctance to support a bill as high as $1 trillion. Last month, Obama said in a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress that he preferred a package with a price tag of around $900 billion.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091023/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul_60

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So, anonymous sources are now contradicting the CBO figure, and the AP reports it as news.

[Deja Q]

1. OVER A DECADE

Watch when some spin it was "$1 trillion now" or something...


As long as it isn't a free giveaway to the insurance companies, who should cut costs to bring in more customers like how the rest of us have to...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Or slightly less than a war...

[katkat]

7. a heck of a lot less than a war

Isn't Iraq running up a 1/2 trillion bill a year? Not to mention Afghanistan?

I'd like to see Congress refuse to support wars that aren't revenue neutral :-)

[bvar22]

21. Do the math:

$1 Trillion for 10 years.

Less than 10 Million enrolled in the Public Option after 10 years.

Where do YOU think most of that $1 Trillion Dollars is going to go?


a hint:



Another hint:

[RantinRavin]

2. The CBO hasn't put a figure on this

As it is still taking shape. Only after the final bill is written can they put an official number on it.

[JuniperLea]

3. Back to this bullshit, huh?

Forget the amount of money saved, forget the 30% off the top that insurance companies keep...

[FiveGoodMen]

5. And to think: We just handed that much to the banksters with no real strings attached

And we aren't even supposed to ask what they did with it, although the bonuses are a pretty big clue.

[Aramchek]

6. flailing attempt will fail

[katkat]

8. I see some freeper unrecommended this thread

How about the ids of unrecommenders being posted?

[bbinacan]

9. Some freeper unrecommended?

How can you know this? You want IDs? Well I unrecommended because of this comment. And don't call longtime DU folks freepers unless you can back it up.

[joeycola]

11. its been routine for

some DU members to call others freepers lately. Nothing is done about it either which is a sad.

[SkyDaddy7]

13. WOW...I thought...

Only those who are sub par meaning have less than 1000 post got called a freeper. Folks call anyone they disagree with here on DU a freeper, nothing new.

[bbinacan]

14. That's a shame isn't it. n/t

[katkat]

17. well

Well, perhaps you can discuss why anyone but a freeper would unrecommend this. That's when you're not busy hacking other people's blogs (Yeah, I looked you up) or taking out your pettiness on the thread originator, an innocent bystander. No wonder you get banned.

[Psephos]

18. Uncle DU wants YOU to run for Ideological Purity Police Commissioner

The effin' nerve of some people to hold differing opinions.... Time to scout 'em, out 'em, and nail their flayed hides to the wall as a warning.

Thank you in advance for your efforts on behalf of the progressive principles of independent thinking, open discussion, and inclusion.

[clear eye]

10. Yeah, subsidized private insurance can be pricey

as Massachusetts found out.

[Jkid]

12. Is single payer a lot cheaper than this health care reform?

[davekriss]

15. No F*cking Problem

Just take $100 billion a year out of the military budget and it's paid for!

Bread, not bullets! Health, not death!!

Why is this not obvious to we, the unwashed masses?

[Blandocyte]

16. Wow. Almost as much as the illegal Iraq war.

[defendandprotect]

20. And we do have to keep RE-FUNDING those illegal/immoral wars . . .???

Which have bankrupted our Treasury !!!

Hell, NO!!!

:)

[defendandprotect]

19. So . .. bailouts for capitalism $8-12 TRILLION . .. Medicare for all $1 TRILLION . . .hmmm....

[Igel]

22. The CBO estimate can be contradicted.

Most argue over the final number. The real issues aren't the final numbers claimed but the assumptions. If some "officials" make different assumptions of course they're almost certain to get different final figures. It's unlikely that a different set of assumptions would be a wash when it came to how the final figures tallied up.

Note that the the CBO's assumptions, by the CBO's own admission, are both "conservative" and "uncertain". Simply put, nobody knows, and nobody has much of a clue as to what they don't know. As they bandy about "small" changes there's no reason to expect those changes not to have rather serious budget consequences.

Now, I'd also fully expect Bauckus to know how to play the game. He'd have looked--or, rather, his staffers--at the kinds of assumptions that the CBO made in their analyses of budget predictions for prior plans. Meaning that his staff would also be able to predict, with a fairly high degree of certainty, how the CBO would evaluate his proposed bill. This is a powerful tool: It means that they can alter things to achieve the right number, *even if* they and others don't necessarily believe the budget assumptions the CBO uses are remotely right. Yes, today is one of those days when I'm that cynical. These are politicians, not an idealistic, romantic version of knights in shining armor.

Even Obama hedged, although his hedge isn't popularly pointed out. He said he "will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits". That's a fairly vacuous affirmation. Whatever Bauckus' proposed bill actually does is rather different from what it's planned to do--it's not the the plan that's the problem, it's the implementation. Moreover, "deficit" would mean either the budget projections or actual deficits. Now, all the bills add significantly to the actual deficit, it's just that they're measuring it against the projected deficit; many politicians assume that any budget deficit projection is a given and attempts shouldn't be made to decrease it (if it's politically expedient), so if they don't increase it that's fine. So Obama wasn't talking actual dollars, he was saying that the plan would be neutral wrt the projected deficits--which, as far as I'm concerned, was padded to get us over the initial sticker shock so that anything less would be acceptable. Think of it as the way Scotty on Star Trek worked--"No, capt'n, it will take 3 hours" so that when it takes an hour you're a hero, even if it needed to be done in 15 minutes. (Sorry, but he's made enough statements that show he carefully parses his words as a lawyer in a courtroom would, so while the minimum he means is that there'd be no plan to increase the now-assumed projected deficit there's no reason to interpret his statement to mean he'd sign no plan whose likely implementation would possibly or even likely increase the actual deficit.)