The Health Care debacle

Now that the dust has begun to settle from the recent health care debate in Congress, and now that people have had time to examine the language in the legislation that was actually passed (most members of Congress never had time to read all of the final bill before they had to vote on it), some interesting numbers are emerging.

On April 22, the Chief Actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report on his department's best estimates of the effect of this legislation, touted by the administration to save us all lots of money over the next decade or so. You can read the entire report here.

In summary, his office estimates the legislation will cost about an additional $828 billion through 2019, and save about $577 billion, for a net added cost of about $251 billion. And that assumes all the "cost savings" ideas are actually implemented, including cutting Medicare payments to doctors by 21% - something Congress has yet to do, and is unlikely ever to do.

The report also questions whether any of the legislation will actually reduce health care costs, and suggests that the incentives may actually result in some small employers dropping their health care plans entirely.

So much for the political promises made to get this bill passed........