Posted on 01/10/2010 5:30:17 AM PST by Son House
The Senate's plan to expand health coverage to 34 million more Americans would raise costs slightly, government economic experts said in a report Saturday.
Over time, cost-cutting measures could start to reduce the annual increases in health care spending, offering the possibility of substantial savings in the long run. At the same time, however, some of the Senate's Medicare savings could be unrealistic and cause lawmakers to roll them back, according to Medicare's top number crunchers.
The study found that health spending, which accounts for about one-sixth of the economy, would go up by less than 1 percent more than it otherwise would have increased over the coming decade, even with so many more people receiving coverage.
President Barack Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to play up the brighter side of the overhaul he hopes to sign in time for his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in a matter of weeks.
He said it would ban "the worst practices of the insurance industry" even as he acknowledged it would take several years — until 2014 in some instances — for some of the changes to be fully in place. That has disappointed consumers and their advocates.
"Now, it'll take a few years to fully implement these reforms in a responsible way," the president said.
"In short, once I sign health insurance reform into law, doctors and patients will have more control over their health care decisions and insurance company bureaucrats will have less," Obama said. "All told, these changes represent the most sweeping reforms and toughest restrictions on insurance companies that this country has ever known."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Adding 34 million more to the health care rolls would require how many more doctors, nurses, hospitals, medical equipment, medications, employees for insurance companies, the list goes on and on. This will result in higher costs to the healthcare institutions which will be passed on to the consumer. Why is this concept so hard for these people to grasp? Do you think just once the Republicans would run ads using these facts against the Dems (and their willing servants in the media)?
I call BS.
People will be rioting in the streets hunting down Democrats if this monstrosity becomes law.
Total BS. The article does not even cite the source of this “report”.
The current progressive elites in charge of the Republican party are in on the gig as well. During the entire time the Senate was crafting this thing, the Republican leadership only wanted to add ammendments to make it better and had no inclination at all to killing it. This is why Steele’s money intake to the RNC is dead.
We the People have had it up to our eyeballs and voting them all out is now the clarion cry with the Tea Partyers now weilding the hammer in this upcoming election for both sides of the aisle.
I attended the First Coast Tea Party planning retreat yesterday and the gig is up for the power lites in DC unless they figure out some way to either not hold or nullify the 2010 elections. The simple fact is they are scared to death and they know we are coming.
Is there anyone that believes that? This statement is an insult to our intelligence. In my experience (pretty extensive BTW) insurance companies our easy to deal with if your the consumer as long as you read the policy and understand on follow the rules. In fact it is usually the insurance company protecting me from hospitals and doctors over charging and over prescribing.
When the government is the bureaucrats your dealing with it becomes arbitrary and capricious, and to get things solved you almost always have to get a lawyer to get things off dead center.
You will notice that I referred to "prices" rather than "costs" because our government is purposely confusing the two. The "cost" of health care is necessarily increased by any government mandate; the only question is who pays the price.
They are “experts”. Therefore, they must know what they’re talking about, right? Seriously, even the FOX News story did not identify who these geniuses are; which would be interesting to know given the fact that they are predicting a stable “cost” structure for services upon which massive new mandates are proposed and for which new demand will be effectively subsidized. In today’s world that sort of economic legerdemain might win you a Nobel Prize.
A fine example of a Democrat Expert;
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leaders, Committee Chairs and six Economic Experts held a press conference:
Who is the real Former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder, Economic Expert #1, or Economic Expert #2?
Transcript of Pelosi, House Democratic Leaders, and Economists’ Press Conference Following Economic Forum 10/21/2009
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1414
Economic Expert #1. Alan Blinder 10/21/2009
“So for that reason, despite the fact that we’re looking at an absolutely horrendous long-term fiscal outlook,”
or
Wall St. Journal : The Case for Optimism on the Economy 12/16/2009 | Alan Blinder
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2408814/posts?page=24
Economic Expert #2. Alan Blinder, 12/16/2009
“Let me offer instead, in deliberately one-sided fashion, the case for optimism.”
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