Posted on 07/12/2009 11:33:10 AM PDT by Graybeard58
After all his lying about his sweetheart mortgages, his Irish cottage, the AIG bonuses and his wife's appointments to corporate boards, would you buy a used car from Sen. Christopher Dodd? Then why would you buy his health-insurance coverage?
Sen. Dodd has proposed a government-run health-care program that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would taxpayers cost a mere $61 billion a year over the next decade. Sen. Dodd said KennedyDoddCare would "dramatically reduce the number of uninsured — fully 97 percent of Americans will have coverage, a major achievement."
A major achievement, all right — in duplicity. This is a classic foot-in-the-door plan, complete with the gross cost underestimate, that will lead to socialized medicine akin to what the British and Canadians wish they didn't have. History says $611 billion over 10 years is not the cost of KennedyDoddCare; it's the down payment on the initiation fee.
When Medicare began in 1966, Congress said it would cost just $12 billion in 1990; actual outlays that year were $107 billion. In 2008, almost $50 billion of the $468 billion in Medicare spending paid for prescription drugs. That's 20 percent more than President Bush estimated Part D would cost annually when he proposed it in 2003. Now Congress says taxpayers will have to cough up an average of $90 billion a year for Part D over the next decade.
Likewise, Sen. Dodd's numbers just don't add up. Medicare today covers 45 million Americans at a cost of about $10,500 each. Medicaid's expenses are almost $7,000 for each of its 49 million clients. But Sen. Dodd says KennedyDoddCare would cover 46 million — 97 percent of the 47 million uninsured, including 10 million illegal aliens and 10 million Americans who can afford insurance but choose not to buy it — at a mere $1,300 per person.
Enrollment in KennedyDoddCare would be optional, but it would not be long before it would be swamped with millions of Americans who have lost their employer-sponsored coverage. He says the bill "virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employee-sponsored health plans" (our emphasis), but it would charge companies with 25 or more employees $375 to $750 annually per worker if they don't offer health insurance. Employers now paying thousands per employee for insurance would be nuts not to pay the fee and tell their workers to go on KennedyDoddCare.
The resulting rush for government insurance would cause costs to spiral out of control and kill the insurance industry, further injuring the economy and the equity markets while driving up unemployment. And once private insurers are gone, the government would be free to ration care and raise the fees on employers to reflect its real costs, which would be many times what Sen. Dodd projects today.
The two main questions Americans should ask are: Would KennedyDoddCare be run efficiently? Can the country afford it? Well, after just 43 years as a government-run enterprise, Medicare has unfunded liabilities of nearly $90 trillion, $17 trillion attributable to Part D, and will run out of money in 2017. Medicare trustees say they need "an immediate 134 percent increase in the payroll tax ... or an immediate 53 percent reduction in program outlays, or some combination of the two," or the whole system will go belly up. Meanwhile, Medicaid costs adjusted for inflation are five times what they were when the program began and are expected to double to $674 billion by 2017. Both programs are rife with fraud, waste and abuse — $60 billion worth in 2008 alone.
Rivaling those programs in cost and inefficiency is Social Security with its $17 trillion in unfunded debt. By 2016, benefit costs will exceed payroll-tax receipts. The Social Security Trust Fund contains $2.4 trillion, but that money was spent long ago, replaced by government IOUs. Without steep tax increases and benefit cuts, the system essentially will be funded entirely by general and payroll taxes starting in 2016.
On top of those liabilities is the $11.5 trillion national debt. President Obama's 10-year budget increases that debt to $23 trillion, but only if interest rates stay low, which they almost assuredly won't because inflation fueled by the government's hyperactive spending and its monetizing of its debt will kick in soon.
Americans always should beware of universal health care. But with fabulist Sen. Dodd acting as point man, they should be downright incredulous of any promise, assertion or representation he makes about KennedyDoddCare.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this list, let me know.
Let me guess Dodd’s song:
“..oh say can you see, what is in it for me...”
I have some “Dump Dodd” stickers that RaceBannon gave me that I might have to put on my truck.
Tom, you already know the answers to those questions. In fact, Teddy has already opted out of Romneycare in MA when he had treatment for his brain tumor. If these government plans are so wonderful, why don’t politicians want to take part?
Chris Dodd needs to be shown the door, even if it means replacing him with a less-than-conservative Republican (like Rob Simmons). Of course, Sam Caliguri is also a feasible candidate.
not just sign up,but have it paid for by ...the taxpayer!
Feel free to pass it on to your local liberal nut.
Thanks for the ping to another great Republican-American Editorial Graybeard. Covers the matter well.
Replace Dodd with a street wino, a soccer mom with a drug problem, or a convicted sex offender, just so long as you replace him. It will take ANYBODY at least a year or two to learn how to steal at his level of expertise, so we'll be decidedly better off until that point.
4am bump! ;-)
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