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Jewish World Review
Oct. 16, 2009/ 28 Tishrei 5770
Cost Projections vs. Actual Costs, or Hope and Change vs. Reality
By
Arnold Ahlert
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
One of the lynchpins Democrats are using to foist government healthcare on the country is telling people that it won't add to the deficit. In other words, they are making future cost projections which they claim are accurate. So, what's the government track record with respect to such accuracy?
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When Medicaid was enacted in 1965, Congress predicted it would cost $9 billion by 1990. Actual cost that year? $67 billion, seven times the original estimate.
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When the prescription drug plan was added in 2003, the original price tag was $400 billion. The latest estimate? $724 billion on the "low" end, and more than $1.2 trillion on the high end, for the years 2006 through 2015, between double and triple the original estimate
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When Medicaid's special hospital subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million dollars a year. Five years later it had cost $11 billion, twenty two times the original estimate.
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When Medicare's home care benefit was added in 1988 it was projected to cost $4 billion in 1993. Actual cost? $10 billion, two-and-a-half times the original estimate.
Current CBO estimate for the Baucus healthcare "bill?" $880 billion dollars. Why is the word bill in quotation marks? Because there is no bill that has actually been written.
Let's do a simple exercise. Let's take the lowest actual cost vs. cost projection from the above bullet points, which would be the home benefit subsidy, the one in which "reality" was two-and-a-half times the cost of "hope and change." Two and half times $880 billion? $2.2 trillion dollars using the most accurate of the egregiously inaccurate cost projections from above.
Aggravated? It gets worse. Part of the cost projections for the Baucus bill is based on savings, as in "trimming" Medicare by $404 billion. If Congress could actually do that, why haven't they done it already?
In modern times, has there ever been any spending program enacted by our federal government that didn't exceed is projected estimate? Eleven trillion dollars of national debt and counting might be an indication that cost projections aren't worth a plugged nickel. Then again,
if this administration keeps printing money, even a plugged nickel won't be worth what it once was.
On Wednesday, in yet another one of those Orwellian moments this administration is becoming famous for, Mr. Obama said he was "going to continue to explore each and every avenue that I can think of that will lead to job creation and economic growth."
Apparently, the president isn't a particularly deep thinker. One of those avenues that eludes Mr. Obama is reducing the runaway government spending that is bankrupting the country.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR Contributor Arnold Ahlert's column, by clicking here.
Previously:
10/14/09: News you can use …
10/07/09: Incremental Insidiousness
10/05/09: MIA: Common Sense and Common Decency
09/30/09: Iran: Bad Options and Unpreparedness
09/21/09: Crying Racism: the Last Refuge of Scoundrels
09/11/09: 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized
09/08/09: Truthers and Consequences
09/01/09: A Paper Trail Challenge for the Mainstream Media
08/31/09: Drowning in Amorality
08/26/09: The Republican Recovery Program
© 2009, Arnold Ahlert
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