The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office has a well-deserved reputation for non-partisan honesty when scoring legislative bills. So I was curious exactly how the CBO could report that the Obama Healthcare bill was deficit neutral and would not significantly raise taxes. All of which appears to be a complete lie.
Manipulated by the system …
While it is true that the CBO does perform its function in an honest, non-partisan manner, it should be recognized that the information provided to the CBO can be false and misleading. Thus armed with such dishonest legislative assumptions, the CBO produces an “honest” report about a dishonest legislative effort.
Organized dishonesty …
Misleading legislative assumptions … By altering the number and classification of people to be covered by a legislative initiative or manipulating basic assumptions, one can induce the CBO to produce an honest estimate of a dishonest legislative initiative. Some suspicious assumptions include:
The number of illegal aliens that may be covered by the system. A number estimated to be somewhere between 12 and 22 million.
The amount of money which will be carved-out of Medicare with the reduction or elimination of the Medicare Advantage Program.
The amount of money that can be truly saved by controlling waste, fraud and abuse of the healthcare system. It hasn’t been controlled to date and both political parties have done little or nothing to ameliorate a problem which they both admit is almost unknowable.
The amount of money that was said to be provided as discounts by special-interest deals with the pharmaceutical industry, the physicians and hospitals, the medical equipment suppliers and, of course, the insurance industry.
The bogus manipulation of the payment system to cost shift certain expenses to individuals rather than having the expenses paid from tax revenues.
And,of course, the reductions in medical benefits such as those dictated by a panel studying “best practices” medicine. An example of which was the panel’s recommendation on limitations on screening mammograms.
Carve out bills … To contain overall costs, certain costs regarding physician reimbursements and other matters were simply transferred to another legislative bill where they will be scored by the CBO separately from the original bill. Thus total costs of any particular bill can be easily manipulated.
Delegating implementation … The CBO often requires the legislative language of a bill in order to perform its work. However, certain costs are incalculable and are so noted by the CBO. An egregious example of this maneuver is to simply require the Secretary of an Administrative Agency, such as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to control the implementation of a broad-brush concept. Thus the exact costs remain unknown as there is no legislative language specifying how a function must be implemented or the costs associated with implementing such a function.
Year-to-year phase-in/cost shifting … How many people notice that this bill achieves its cost objectives by collecting higher taxes starting in the new year, but does not provide the services anticipated under the legislative initiative until approximately 2014. With a four-year head start on tax collection to balance the phased-in costs of the last six-years, the projected cost numbers can be easily manipulated.
And the truly unknowable … How many last-minute special deals were cut by the Administration to insure that their “cash for cloture” program succeeded to produce enough vote to pass this toxic bill. Exempting entire states from paying their fair share into the program. Providing $100 million dollar grants for hospitals in a desperate politician’s state.
The truth is that the CBO cannot predict or cost the consequences of political meddling and the cost of future bills which will deal with healthcare, but will be costed separately to produce a work of political fiction that is being sold the American public.
Imagine the difficulty in scoring new entities which are only contemplated under the new legislation?
Would you believe?
With all due deference to superspy Maxwell Smart, would anyone believe that late night sessions, hidden deals, no transparency, no Republican input, 2000+ page ever-changing draft bill copies and an unknown Senate/House reconciliation effort will produce a bill that can be correctly and accurately scored by the CBO in just a few days?
Would anyone believe that the democrat promise to provide more healthcare coverage to more people while reducing costs for individuals and businesses -- and reducing the deficit – is even possible?
Chaos and confusion …
The way I see it, the Obama healthcare initiative is not about reforming our healthcare system. It is about pursuing a toxic ideological agenda which will result in larger government, more taxation and the reduction of personal freedoms. It will create an historic government monitoring apparatus that will capture details of every American’s life in near-real time. Creating a massive database, with little or no privacy protections or safeguards to hold health, employment and financial data. Not to mention that your Social Security number will now serve as a national identity number – even though we know the Social Security Number has been compromised by illegal aliens and identity thieves.
Why the rush?
If the healthcare system will begin implementation in 2014, why is Congress trying to bully its members to pass this toxic bill with a vote said to occur on Christmas Eve? Why is Congress openly flouting the will of the people? Why are the democrats ignoring at least 46% of the voting population by shutting out the Republicans?
Truth-be-told, they don’t want you – or even their less privileged members – to know what they are really doing. The more time the bill is available for analysis by impartial – or even partisan – onlookers, the worse it appears to be.
Bottom line …
This is a bad bill and passing it will create a social and political upheaval, the likes of which we have never seen before. And it is all owned by the corrupt and complacent democrats as the Republicans refuse to participate in the charade of bipartisanship when it comes to perpetrating the largest fraud in history on the American public – all to advance a socialistic political agenda and quite possibly destroy the United States economy.
My opinion can be simply stated …
-- steve
Reference Links …
Since legislation is constantly changing from the initial draft copy due to the effects of compromises and amendments – and ultimately the
Manager’s Amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
“CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have released an analysis of the budgetary effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Senate Amendment 2786 in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 3590 (as printed in the Congressional Record on November 19, 2009), incorporating the effects of changes proposed in the manager’s amendment released earlier today. The estimate does not include the effects of other amendments adopted during the Senate’s consideration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; it also does not reflect an incremental effect on PPACA from Congressional action on H.R. 3326, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010, which was cleared earlier today. Throughout this blog entry, references to “the legislation” mean the act as originally proposed and incorporating the manager’s amendment.”
“CBO has discovered an error in the cost estimate released yesterday related to the longer-term budgetary effects of the manager’s amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Correcting that error has no impact on the estimated effects of the legislation during the 2010–2019 period. However, the correction reduces the degree to which the legislation would lower federal deficits in the decade after 2019.”
Comments