ObamaCare Is Bending The Cost Curve Upward

IBD Editorials ^ | April 2, 2012

[Kaslin]

Rising Costs: The president insisted — repeatedly — that his party's health care overhaul would roll back spending. Skeptics, of course, knew better. But we wonder how many realized just how costly the reform would be.

President Obama promised the Democrats' health care legislation would both "bend" the health care cost curve downward and "cut the deficit by a trillion dollars."

Critics said hogwash and pointed out that government programs, particularly signature initiatives, always cost far more than the bureaucracy projects. Despite promises that ObamaCare would be different, it turns out that it won't.

Using the administration's own numbers as well as data provided by the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Budget Committee minority staff announced last week that unfunded obligations that are part of ObamaCare will pad the federal debt by $17 trillion.

According to the analysis, the unfunded obligations of Social Security and all federal health care programs before the legislation was passed and signed was $65 trillion over the next 75 years. Figuring in the costs of ObamaCare boosts that figure to $82 trillion.

Of course the Democrats will try to poison the estimate, saying it's a gross exaggeration by the Budget Committee's minority — in this case Republican — staff.

But we see no attempt to cook the numbers. The model used by the committee staff to arrive at the estimate is based on the model the Office of the Actuary at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Service uses for its own projections.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It was never about health care.

It was about control.

And overwhelming the system.