Costs are emerging as the biggest obstacle to President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to provide health insurance for everybody.
The upfront tab could reach $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, while expected savings from wringing waste and inefficiency from the health care system may take longer to show.
Details of the health legislation have not been written, but the broad outlines of the overhaul are known. Economists and other experts say the $634 billion that Obama's budget sets aside for health care will pay perhaps half the cost.
You know how it is. If it wasn't for that nasty thing called money, we could all do so much with ourselves. It appears to be that everything is perfect with Obama's plan to make sure everyone has health insurance except for the fact that it will cost trillions of dollars to do it.
This reminds of the time I saw John Rowe of Exelon speak about global warming. He was so excited about the potential for nuclear power. There was just one tiny problem with his plan to save the earth. It would cost about half a trillion dollars. Once again, that nasty little problem of money got in the way of such great ideas.
This weekend, under the proverbial cover of media darkness, President Obama announced plans for more new taxes.
The Obama administration will propose $60 billion in new tax increases over 10 years on wealthy estates, businesses and others to make up for shortfalls in its fund to pay for an expensive overhaul of the health-care system.
The measures go beyond plans the White House has announced in the past few weeks. Officials said that upon further analysis they realized that they had overestimated savings and tax increases proposed in February to help pay the bill.
The full proposals will come Monday when the White House releases a detailed analysis of its budget blueprint. Administration officials described the new proposals not as tax increases, but as eliminating "tax loopholes."
Obama has already set aside nearly $600 billion for his health care expansion, however that's likely only half of what he will need over the next ten years. We're already facing unprecedented deficits as far as the eye will see and President Obama thinks that he can tack on trillions more for European style socialized medicine.
Here's the only problem with his plan. There's only so much you can soak corporations and wealthy Americans. He will reach his limit long before health care for all is paid for. So, soon enough, he will have to tax more than merely the so called rich.
Look at how desperate he is already. This latest plan is only for $60 billion. He is essentially looking under any rock to find a way to tax the wealthy and corporations more. He's turned most of them over and he's still about $600 billion short at least. The numbers simply won't add up. Unless, he thinks two trillion in annual deficits will be acceptable, soon enough, he will be breaking that promise of only taxing the top five percent of all Americans.
It's actually pretty simple. There's about 45 million people uninsured. He isn't going to create more doctors or hospitals. The health insurance of those folks will have to be paid by someone. The rich can only pay so much. Frankly, there aren't enough of them out there to support putting 45 million new people into the health care system. So, soon enough, more than merely the "rich" will be footing the tab for all these new folks.
There's a reason Canada banned private, for-profit insurance. A public system cannot survive without everybody being in it to subsidize the people who can't pay in.
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