Cost of Obamacare Skyrockets from Billions to Trillions

March 14, 2012 by The Godfather

The cost of government programs is always underestimated. This is on purpose. If the president and congress actually reported what a program will really cost, the legislation would never pass. There isn’t a single government program where the cost projections have been accurate.

Social Security and Medicare are two perfect examples. Both are teetering on insolvency. It’s only because the government can force people to pay more that they remain economically viable. It doesn’t hurt that the government can print money when needed. Now we’re being told that Obamacare costs were woefully underestimated. Here’s a report in the Washington Examiner that lays it all out:

“President Obama’s national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.

Usually we don’t find out about the cost overruns until we’re deep in the program and it’s too late to get out. We know now. Will the president and congress pull the plug on another government boondoggle before we are swamped by its mass? Not surprisingly,

“Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO’s standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama’s pledge that the legislation would cost “around $900 billion over 10 years.” When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.

Notice that the true costs won’t be noticed until after the 2012 election. The Democrats hoped they could push through the program before its costs would be noticed by the healthcare-going public. One more thing. These are still GOVERNMENT projections. The numbers need to be doubled . . . probably tripled to get an accurate picture of what we’ are facing.

Will these new numbers mean anything for those who voted for the program? Not in the least. In fact, what we may begin to see is more congressmen deciding not to run this year. They’re afraid that they might be blamed for the inevitable train wreck if they’re still in office.

The most infuriating thing about Obamacare is that the GOP candidates are hardly talking about it anymore. Romney wants to avoid it because of Romneycare, the Massachusetts state program that the architects of Obamacare used to model their national program. Let’s see if the GOP jumps on these cost projections to make them a top-tier campaign issue.

Unfortunatley, there are a lot of Democrat voters who don’t care what something costs because they aren’t going to pay for it. “Just tax the rich more to make up for the shortfall.”