A Six Trillion Dollar Bill

How much would ObamaCare cost for the first ten years?

Through the power of gimmicks, fabrication and wishful thinking, Congress has generated an illusion of relative fiscal responsibility. Democrats in Congress assure us that their bill will only cost about a trillion dollars for the first decade. But when reality comes home to roost, ObamaCare might result in pandemic sticker shock.

Senator Judd Gregg explains:

What they don't tell the American people is they're not spending anything in the first four or five years of the bill. No. They do raise your taxes throughout the ten-year period. They do cut Medicare throughout the ten-year period. But they don't spend the money. They don't start the spending programs until the year 2014. When this bill is fully phased in, when all these new programs, these massive expansion of entitlements are created, these brand-new entitlements, when all this new spending occurs — this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.

[emphasis added]

The Democrats have also ignored the burden of ObamaCare on individuals and businesses:

Another gimmick pushes much of the legislation’s costs off the federal budget and onto the private sector by requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance. When the bills force somebody to pay $10,000 to the government, the Congressional Budget Office treats that as a tax. When the government then hands that $10,000 to private insurers, the CBO counts that as government spending. But when the bills achieve the exact same outcome by forcing somebody to pay $10,000 directly to a private insurance company, it appears nowhere in the official CBO cost estimates — neither as federal revenues nor federal spending.

So if we account for all of the budget gimmicks and hidden fees (requiring employers to purchase health insurance, the cost of the individual mandate, the burden of Medicaid mandates on state governments, the doc fix, sundry off-budget costs and calendar tricks) how much will ObamaCare cost?

$6.25 trillion. (Give or take a few hundred billion).

Via Left Coast Rebel

Via Memeorandum

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