A NEW ENTITLEMENT THAT CUTS THE DEFICIT?

Subject: txt 1st hcare mny -
Anyone who reads beyond the top-line numbers of the CBO's estimate of the Senate health care bill will find that the it creates massive new spending commitments that will inevitably explode over time, and that this is "paid for" with huge tax increases plus phantom spending cuts that will never happen, says the Wall Street Journal. For example:

• Baucus spends $10.9 billion to eliminate the scheduled Medicare cuts to physician payments --but only for next year.
• In 2011, he assumes they'll be reduced by 25 percent, with even deeper cuts later, with no specifics as to how provided.
• Congress has overridden this "sustainable growth rate" every year since 2003 and will continue to do so because deeper cuts in Medicare's price controls will cause many doctors to quit the program.
• Fixing this alone would add $245 billion to the bill's costs, according to an earlier CBO estimate.

Source: Editorial, "The Greatest Show on Earth; Step right up: A new entitlement that cuts the deficit!" Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2009.

[We're evidently not supposed to notice that while the taxation half of the bill would start immediately upon its passage, the benefit payouts won't start until 2013. I.e., several years of loading the pipe with 'free' money and the only way the CBO could arrive at its absurd claim of deficit reduction.

2013 is also after the next presidential election.]

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