CBO Tells Truth About Government Healthcare

The Congressional Budget Office Director sent out letters to both Senators Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg this week detailing the budgetary concerns over healthcare costs. The Director wrote, "The federal government’s budgetary commitments to health care (including both spending programs and tax preferences) total more than $1 trillion in 2009. Many proposals to significantly expand health insurance coverage would add to federal costs by providing large subsidies to help lower-income individuals and families purchase insurance. Such proposals could permanently boost the government’s budgetary commitments to health care by something in the vicinity of 10 percent. Improving the long-term budget outlook would require addressing that added cost in addition to the budgetary strains anticipated under current law. Health care legislation might include provisions that would make it budget neutral over the first 10 years, but such legislation might nevertheless add to budget deficits in later years." The CBO's analysis on health care spending did not include the potential bill being pondered in the Senate.

This basically informs us that the cost of government healthcare will be great and keep in mind that these estimates do not include the public option part of government healthcare. The CBO included the estimate that many people would leave their employer health plans and buy into the government plan and that this healthcare plan will leave thirty million people still without healthcare. The report states, "Most expansions of insurance coverage that are under consideration would leave a moderate number of people uninsured, in part because some people
would be ineligible for subsidies or would choose not to buy insurance even with large subsidies. Therefore, any current problems arising from the lack of insurance could be reduced but not eliminated." The concern in the Congress is so great over this CBO report that Max Baucus who drafted the original legislation is starting over with the bill.

The CBO also projects that "Medicare’s Part A trust fund—which pays for inpatient services,
post-acute care, and hospice services and receives revenues principally from the
payroll tax—will have insufficient funds to pay for all covered services starting in
2017." The Congress and President have offered no option with how to reform Medicare. The CBO also maintains that offering broader coverage will not reduce costs or produce net savings in national or federal spending on health care.

"This bill costs too much, covers too few and will force about 10 million people to have to lose their employer-provided coverage," Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, told CNN. And despite the President claiming that the AMA is with him, the president, Nancy Nielsen said, "We're not sure that the government is very good at running a health plan."

The CBO report can be found here.