Neal Boortz: Kids won’t forgive us for ObamaCare

By Neal Boortz

For The AJC

The vote on ObamaCare is scheduled for Sunday. If the people of this country allow this monstrosity to become law, it will be a testament to government education; only people educated by government could come to believe that the government could possibly do a better job of delivering health care to the people than a dynamic private sector.

I firmly believe that if we permit this move toward a complete government takeover of our health care system, future generations of Americans will curse us for our ignorance and inattentiveness.

The Congressional Budget Office came out with its scoring of ObamaCare on Thursday. We’re told that it will only cost $940 billion over the first 10 years. Since you are intelligent enough to be reading this column I’m confident you already know of this chicanery, but I’ll guess that most other Americans don’t know that this figure is essentially a fraud.

Let’s assume that the $940 billion price tag is correct. Fine. But did you know that this only pays for six years of benefits? That’s right. The Democrats were determined to keep the cost under $1 trillion for the first 10 years, so they decided to start collecting the money four years before they would start actually offering benefits. So the actual cost of benefits for every year those benefits are offered comes to about $157 billion a year. Multiply that by 10 to get your true 10-year cost: a cool $1.57 trillion dollars. But wait! (As they say.) There’s more!

You’ve heard of the “Doc Fix” haven’t you? Well here’s how that little goodie works. For years there’s been this federal law that requires a cut in Medicare payments to physicians. Politicians aren’t anxious to cut these payments because they know it will only result in more doctors shutting their doors to Medicare patients.

So every year they pass a bill to keep payments as they are. ObamaCare makes that fix permanent, hence the “Doc Fix.” The cost? Try between $350 billion and $370 billion. The Democrats wanted a permanent Doc Fix, but it’s just too costly. The fix for the Doc Fix? Just pass it as separate legislation. That way it isn’t scored by the CBO with the rest of the ObamaCare package. So, adding in that $350 billion and where do we find ourselves? Let’s try $1.93 trillion. Nudging awfully close to $2 trillion for 10 years, aren’t we?

Allow me to make the situation even worse. What we’re dealing with is cost estimates from the government. Do these estimates ever brush close to reality?

Let’s take a look at Medicare. Medicare was passed in 1966. One year later the Congress told us that Medicare would cost around $9 billion a year by 1990. How close were they? Well, let’s just say they missed it by a factor of about 10. The actual cost was closer to $120 billion. There has never been a government entitlement program that came in at less than twice the original cost estimates.

Finally, let’s deal with the community organizer’s pledge that ObamaCare wouldn’t add “one dime” to our deficit. In fact, he says it’s going to lower the deficit! Yeah, right. With borrowed money.

Just one example and you can go get your chips and dip ready for this afternoon’s episode of March Madness.

ObamaCare will increase Social Security and Medicare taxes immediately. There will also be new taxes — “premiums” they call them — for the new long-term, in-home care provision known as the Class Act. These premiums are supposed to be put into a trust fund to pay future benefits for these programs. Instead, the funds will be “borrowed” and spent to keep the deficit down. Later this money will have to be paid back.

Don’t worry, though. The tab will be presented to your children and grandchildren. If you’re still around, I’m sure they will want to thank you.

Neal Boortz’s column will appear every Saturday. For more Boortz, go to boortz.com