Obamacare Will Increase the Deficit and It May Never Be Repealed

Health Care Law Repeal: Why Would It Increase the Deficit?

Obamacare, which the new Republican House leadership is pushing to repeal, includes cuts to government Medicare payments and increased taxes and fees.

January 7, 2011

Christian Science Monitor - House Republican leaders are pressing forward with their top priority: a vote to repeal President Obama’s health care reforms. But Democrats say that in doing so the GOP is abandoning its pledge to exercise fiscal restraint. They claim that rolling back the health reform law would actually add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit over the next decade.

Why might that be the case?

First off, it must be noted that Republicans think this is hooey. Getting rid of big government programs doesn’t cost money, they say.

“I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit,” said House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Thursday.

However, Democrats have the bean-counters at the Congressional Budget Office on their side. For the most part.

In a preliminary analysis released Thursday [PDF], the CBO estimated that health care repeal would add $145 billion to the deficit from 2012 to 2019, and $230 billion from 2012 to 2021.

Two main side effects of repeal would cause this gusher of red ink, said CBO.

First, repealing Obamacare would mean rescinding planned cuts in federal spending on health care, largely for Medicare.

Under the terms of Obama’s health bill, government payments to Medicare Advantage – plans run by private insurers that are an alternative to traditional Medicare – are supposed to be reduced by $132 billion over a decade, for instance. (Those plans now get around 14 percent more per person than traditional Medicare does.) Payments for Medicare home health care would also be slashed by around $40 billion over ten years.

Second, repealing health-care reform would also entail rolling back scheduled tax increases and fees.

For example, individuals making over $200,000, and couples making over $250,000, face higher Medicare Part A (that’s hospital insurance) taxes under Obama’s health reforms. Their Part A tax rate is supposed to go up 0.9 percent on January 1, 2013. That’s a big money raiser, estimated to bring in $210 billion between 2013 and 2019. And it would be eliminated if the health care reform law is repealed. So would planned fees levied on insurers, medical device manufacturers, and others.

Of course, reform repeal would also eliminate Uncle Sam’s need to pay new subsidies to help low- and middle-income workers buy health insurance. That would save a lot of cash, too.

But crunch all these numbers and repeal still comes out a net money-loser, according to the CBO.

“We expect that repealing [the] legislation would increase budget deficits,” writes CBO director Douglas Elmendorf on his blog.

There’s a big “but” attached to the CBO estimates, however. As Elmendorf notes, his organization can only analyze the pieces of paper it has been given. And pieces of paper don’t also reflect what will happen in the real world.

Obama’s health care reforms include “a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time,” writes Elmendorf.

The White House may project cuts in Medicare, for example, but that does not mean they will occur. Congress has reversed agreed-upon Medicare cuts in the past due to pressure from seniors.

So in the end, due to this and other reasons, “the projections of [health care repeal’s] budgetary impact are quite uncertain,” concludes CBO’s analysis.

Unfortunately, Obamacare is Not Going to be Repealed in 2010, It is Not Going to be Repealed in 2011, and There is a Good Chance That It may Never be Repealed

Nationalized healthcare means "one nation, one needle" healthcare. - Lorenz Kraus, The Fantasy of Wealth Redistribution, Ludwig von Mises Institute, November 12, 2010

January 7, 2011

End of the American Dream - Right now the mainstream media is paying a lot of attention to the effort by Republicans in the House of Representatives to repeal the health care reform law that Barack Obama and the Democrats crammed down the throats of the American people during the last session of Congress.

House Republicans are calling their legislation the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act", and the House of Representatives is expected to pass the legislation on January 12th. However, there are two huge problems.

1. One is that Democrats control the U.S. Senate and they have declared that there is not a chance in the world that a repeal of the health care reform law will get through them.


2. Secondly, even if a repeal of the health care law did somehow magically get to Barack Obama's desk, he has sworn that he would veto it.

So unfortunately, Obamacare is not going to be repealed any time soon.

We are all going to have to just learn to put up with the negative effects of the new health care law. We are all going to be paying much higher taxes because of this new law. We are all going to be paying much, much higher health insurance premiums. Job growth is going to be killed because employers will not want to pay for extremely expensive health care plans for new employees. Soon all companies with more than 50 workers will be fined if they do not offer "adequate health coverage" to their employees. So obviously this provides a tremendous incentive to small businesses not to hire more than 50 workers.

In addition, the new health care law gives the U.S. government unprecedented control over the medical industry and over how health care is practiced in this country. The U.S. government will now be telling doctors what medicines to prescribe and what medical procedures are "cost effective". Doctors across America will now have less freedom to practice medicine than they ever have before.

So can't we just opt out of this health care nightmare? No, the truth is that the new health care law makes participation in the system mandatory for virtually all Americans. In fact, if you do not buy health insurance you will soon face fines of up to 2.5 percent of your income by 2016.

So you better run out and pad the profits of the greedy health insurance industry by signing up for a big, fat, juicy health insurance policy.

The health care reform law was one of the worst pieces of legislation that the U.S. Congress has ever passed. It is easy to see why the Republicans want to repeal it.

But as long as the Democrats have control of the Senate and as long as Barack Obama is in the White House, that is simply not going to happen.

The Democrats are married to the health care reform law and they are absolutely obsessed with protecting it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is vowing to block any attempt to repeal Obamacare. According to Reid,

The Republicans must "understand that the health care bill is not going to be repealed" and that they "should get a new lease on life and talk about something else."

Barack Obama is promising to veto any attempt to repeal the new health care reform law. Barack Obama considers the health care law to be one of his crowning achievements, and he will resist any efforts to curtail it.

So that means that the Republicans will simply not be able to repeal the health care law between now and 2012.

So is there any hope once 2012 rolls around?

Well, first the Republicans would have to keep control of the House of Representatives. That would be the easiest part.

Secondly, the Republicans would have to take control of the U.S. Senate. But remember, U.S. Senators serve six year terms, so only a limited amount of seats will be contested in 2012.

Thirdly, the Republicans would have to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. That is not going to be as easy as it seems. Incumbent presidents are hard to defeat.

Plus, when you look at how Barack Obama is polling against potential Republican contenders, the numbers do not look pretty for Republicans.

For example, in poll after poll Barack Obama has been destroying Sarah Palin by double digits. Other Republican contenders are performing better, but Barack Obama still regularly defeats almost all of them in survey after survey.

So if the Republicans want any chance of repealing Obamacare, they better choose a candidate wisely in 2012. If Barack Obama wins in 2012, the health care law is definitely not going to be repealed until after the 2016 election at the earliest.

So will the Republicans be able to win control of the House and the Senate and the White House in 2012?

You never know, but right now the polls are looking surprisingly good for Obama.

Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House are going to do what they can to slow down the implementation of the new health care law. The House has a lot of power to deny funding for various aspects of the health care law, and that is where Republicans will probably be focusing much of their energy over the coming months.

House Majority Leader John Boehner says that he is going to do everything in his power to try to keep the new health care law from being fully implemented....

"I am committed to doing everything that I can do and our team can do to prevent Obamacare from being implemented. I believe that this bill will ruin the best health care system in the world and I believe that it will bankrupt our country. Now, when I say everything, I mean everything."

Rep. Steve King has even floated the idea that every single appropriations bill passed by the House of Representatives in 2011 should include language which specifically prohibits any funding for the implementation of the new health care law.

However, there are some Republican members of Congress that won't even publicly commit to defunding Obamacare. So if Republicans in the House can't even agree on that, then what chance do they really have of accomplishing much of anything to block the new health care law?

The truth is that it is going to be a huge uphill battle to even slow down the implementation of Obamacare.

So what do the American people think about all of this?

Well, according to a Gallup Poll released this week, 46 percent of Americans are in favor of repealing Obamacare while 40 percent of Americans do not want it repealed.

The numbers are pretty close. Republicans overwhelmingly want it repealed while Democrats overwhelmingly want to keep the new health care law.

But perhaps someone should be paying attention to what doctors are saying about this new legislation. This new health care law is driving thousands upon thousands of American doctors out of the profession. In fact, according to one absolutely stunning new poll, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to bail out of the profession over the next three years.

Considering the fact that the U.S. was already facing a very serious shortage of doctors over the next several decades, this has the potential to be a national crisis of mammoth proportions.

Today, there are nearly a million practicing physicians in the United States. So what in the world is going to happen if several hundred thousand of them actually do throw up their hands and head for the exits?

Yes, this is really happening. The U.S. health care system is actually starting to come apart at the seams.

Sadly, there is absolutely no chance that the new health care law is going to be repealed in the next two years. If Barack Obama wins in 2012, that will mean that we are facing at least six years until it has any chance of being repealed.

Meanwhile, this new health care law is going to be savagely ripping apart our health care system and our entire economy.

But this is the new Amerika - where "The American Dream" is rapidly becoming "The American Nightmare".