News about the pinheaded things by politicians and governemt.
Posts tagged CBO
CBO Report: Senate Bill will cause Insurance Premiums to increase
Dec 3rd
It’s been awhile since I posted. I got sick. Then busy. Then sick again. (I know, no need to post personal problems.)
Anyway, the latest CBO report on the effect of the Senate’s latest Health Care Reform Bill undermines the arguments being made by the Democrats. The keep saying that the bill will lower Health Costs, but according to the CBO report, insurance premiums for anybody buying a personal insurance policy will face increased insurance premiums.
So much for lower cost.
At least for individuals.
One thing you need to remember in this entire debate, is that certain people have a Government centric view. This is especially true for long time Washington insiders. Meaning most of our elected officials.
To them, as long as the Health Care Cost for the Government go down, that is all that really matters. When these people talk about lowering costs, they’re not talking about your costs.
It gets even worse when you take into account the way the CBO scores things. The CBO makes certain assumptions, and sometimes those assumptions just aren’t realistic.
In the case of the Senate Bll, the CBO neglects to factor in the fact that a large number of healthy individuals will just refuse to purchase health insurance. It just isn’t worth it. Not when the bill guarantees your ability to purchase insurance after you get sick and caps the premiums Insurers can charge.
Insurance premiums for everyone will go up once you factor those provisions in.
An $829 Billion Government Program will Reduce the Deficit. Tell me another one.
Oct 9th
The CBO scoring of the Senate Finance Committee’s Outline for Health Care Reform (no actually legislation) will supposedly reduce the deficit by $81 Billion. This, despite the fact that the cost is $829 Billion over ten years.
Anybody feel like buying a bridge in N.Y.?
And if you look at the proposal as scored, you begin to realize just how disingenuous the results truly are.
The CBO scores 2010-2019, but the plan isn’t fully implemented until 2013. The cost for the program from 2010-2013 is scored at $14 Billion total.
That means the cost for 2014-2019 (six years) is $815 Billion. (Or $136 Billion a year.)
Then there are the idiotic assumption on tax revenues. The CBO predicts that revenues will be $200 Billion from the excise tax on “Cadillac” Health Plans.
Never going to happen. The $10 Billion in 2013 might be accurate, but the number will go down from there as people start losing plans that get taxed. By 2019, the amount from that excise tax will be far closer to zero than it is to $46 Billion.
The lack of revenues from this tax alone, is enough to ensure that the current proposal will result in increasing the deficit. (Let alone the results of it being amended.)
Couple that with the idiotic assumption on outlays. Government predictions on costs of new programs are notorious for vastly underestimating the costs of those programs. The CBO predicts $400+ Billion in subsidies for people buying health insurance through the Government exchange.
Try doubling or tripling that prediction. Given the fact that far more people will lose their private insurance as the Government’s intervention makes it unaffordable, and the number of people getting subsidies is going to be far more than predicted.
This certainly matches the result of past predictions on the costs involved in new government programs.
Then there are the promised spending cuts. These have been promised before and never happen.
Add the $150 Billion shortfall in taxes, the $600 Billion or so in additional spending on subsidies and $400 Billion in spending cuts that don’t occur and the proposal costs about $1.150 Trillion more than predicted.
That means an increase in the deficit of over $1 Trillion, not a deficit reduction of $81 Billion.
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