CBO Admits Impossible to Know Costs of Obamacare
Posted By Dave Jolly on Jun 9, 2014 | 6 Comments
Five years ago, we were all told that the Affordable Care Act would provide lower healthcare premiums, better quality of healthcare, it would pay for itself and help reduce the federal budget deficit. The only other thing we were told about Obamacare was that we had to pass it in order find out what’s in it.
Four years ago, Obamacare was passed and became law. The wheels were set in motion and as Rep. Nancy Pelosi stated, we started to find out exactly what was in the massive bill.
Since that time, we’ve learned that the bill contained at least 20 new taxes, most of which affect the very people that Obama promised would not face any tax increases; seniors, middle and lower income families. We’ve also seen the costs of medical care skyrocket and the quality of medical treatments decrease. In most states, the cost of healthcare insurance also skyrocketed and there are millions more Americans that are uninsured now than before Obamacare was passed.
Now, the Congressional Budget Office is telling us that it’s impossible to calculate the fiscal impact of Obamacare. Written by the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, their report titled Updated Estimates of the Effects of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the report states:
“[They] can no longer determine exactly how the provisions of the ACA that are not related to the expansion of health insurance coverage have affected their projections of direct spending and revenues.”
The initial assessment of the fiscal effects of Obamacare were based upon all of the provisions of the massive tome be implemented according to schedule. Due to the numerous illegal extensions and changes made by King Obama, the CBO has no clue how to figure out the fiscal impact of the biggest legislative disaster in US history.
Charles Blahous, Senior Fellow at George Mason University Mercatus Center believes that the CBO’s report presents a real problem. He stated:
“The ACA’s financing provisions were assumed to be effective so as to get a favorable score out of CBO upon enactment, but no one is keeping track of whether they’re being enforced. We receive occasional updates on the gross costs of the law, but none on whether the previously projected savings provisions are producing what was originally projected.”
“There’s no barrier to continually rolling back the financing mechanisms without the effect on the ACA’s finances ever being fully disclosed.”
Joseph Antos, the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shared the concerns of Blahous, stating:
“The reality is that they were able to do it a year and a half ago or two years ago, so you have to wonder what changed? They don’t want to admit that what they assumed two years ago is no longer correct because the administration has not implemented many provisions of the law.”
Dan Mendelson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Avalere Health LLC added:
“It becomes very difficult in a fiscally valid way to assess the impact of legislation because so many other things change at the same time. It gets hard to isolate the effects.”
“At a certain point it becomes irrelevant because it’s all part of the baseline of expenditures. It’s current law. And if somebody wants to repeal some portion of that law, then you can assess in a targeted way what that would cost or what the spending impact would be.”
In other words, Obama has so screwed up his own healthcare system so much that no one knows what it’s going to cost, how much revenue it will generate and what effect it will have on the federal budget deficit. The only way to know is to scrap the entire thing and replace it with a more affordable and workable plan that will do all the things Obama’s bill was supposed to do, but has failed miserably. If not repealed, Obamacare may just swallow up all of America’s economy like a giant sinkhole swallowing up houses.
Read more at
http://lastresistance.com/6040/cbo-admits-impossible-know-costs-obamacare/#ZjHQwhUUDIzo8W9X.99
