ObamaCare will not reduce the deficit regardless of what the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) says. Here's why:
At Reason.com, economist Veronique de Rugy rued the “fantasy at work in many official health care cost projections," including a purposely limited report from the CBO that the [NY] Times and Democrats have used to argue ObamaCare as a cost-saver. de Rugy wrote:
"[The CBO report] assumes that Medicare’s sustainable growth rate mechanism, which would have reduced physician payments by 21 percent in 2010 alone, actually takes effect. Medicare reimbursement rates are legislated to decline over time but basically never do. Instead, Congress routinely enacts what's known as the ‘doc fix,’ or upward payment adjustments. As Politico reported in May, ‘In 2010 alone, Congress has already headed off three scheduled payment drops – in January, March and April.’ In fact, as the CBO notes, Congress has kicked the can down the road on payment reductions yet again, putting off the reduction in payment rates until at least December 2010.
ObamaCare doesn't reduce medical costs under even the rosiest of scenarios (that is, projections that take seriously all its creators' assumptions). What we can be certain of is that this legislation increases the amount of money taxpayers will be forced by law to pay for health insurance to the tune of $420 billion over the next 10 years. Claims about ObamaCare’s deficit-reduction effects depend on new taxes growing even faster than new spending. Despite the persistent claims of Peter Orszag and other defenders of the president's health care legislation, ObamaCare has nothing to do with cutting costs."
Let me repeat that last phrase: "ObamaCare has NOTHING to do with CUTTING COSTS." [Emphasis added.]
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