Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Danzig
it won't. i'd imagine obama will make it look nice, will get it passed, and then leave the real bill for after he's long gone out of office. he'll be able to crow about how he got it done (interesting isn't it, when there's a success it's the president who did it, but if there's a problem-it's congresses fault!) but later we'll have bigger and bigger issues to deal with to keep it going.
|
and look what i just found that explains in detail what i predicted:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...508080098.html
Under the House bill, CBO projects that the entitlement would bring in $123 billion in premiums from 2010-2019 and pay out only $20 billion in benefits. CBO also projects that the Senate's version would generate $88 billion in premiums and $14 billion in benefits.
But in a letter late last month to Sen. Tom Harkin, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf explained that while the Class Act would likely reduce federal budget deficits during 2020-2029, it would do so "by smaller amounts than in the initial decade."
By the third decade, CBO says the program would pay more in benefits than it received in premiums and what it saved Medicaid (which currently pays for long-term care for millions of elderly). Mr. Elmendorf concludes that
"the programs would add to budget deficits in the third decade—and in succeeding decades—by amounts on the order of tens of billions of dollars for each 10-year period." These long-term demands on the Treasury would coincide with shortfalls in Medicare and Social Security projected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Sen. Kennedy notwithstanding, it is hard not to conclude that
a major motivation for the Class Act is to make ObamaCare look fiscally better over CBO's official 10-year budget horizon. Without the new long-term care program, CBO's projected deficit reductions for the House and Senate bills would be $36 billion and $58 billion, respectively, rather than $138 billion and $130 billion. This makes the overall Democratic reform look fiscally more responsible than it really is. The real danger comes after 10 years, when the long-term care program will increase deficits and create even greater pressure for government rationing of medical care