As Republican Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Chuck Grassley stated in the Healthcare Summit, there are many gimmicks and "smoke and mirrors" in the current Senate Healthcare plan. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the source that scores these plans. Here are a few examples of this:
- The way the bill was written to the CBO, we start paying for this in taxes in 2010, while the actual plan starts in 2014. In other words, the CBO scored the first 10 years of raising the capital, while only the final six years of this period has the plan implemented. So 10 years of taxes and 6 years of usage. After the first 10 years, the cost curve goes dramatically up, some independent estimates having the plan costing us 2.5 Trillion during the second 10 years.
- Using either the House or Senate Bill, the true costs of 10 years of revenue (taxes, cuts in Medicare, etc.) and 10 years of the healthcare plan, the real cost is over 2.3 Trillion. And this is NOT including what is known as the "Doc Fix", explained below. If it was included, we can add on another 200 Billion or so to the total cost.
- The current plan has Medicare cuts- Does anyone really believe we will have 500 Million Dollars in Medicare cuts? Everytime this puts into legislation (by Republican or Democrat), these funds do NOT get slashed from Medicare. It just won't happen. But in order for Obama's plan to work according to the budge guidelines, this had to be included.
- "Doc Fix". Instead of having a reduction in Medicare doctor fees by 21% going into effect, and thus hurting the bills numbers, both the House and Senate used this in a separate bill. However, these non-cuts still have to be considered in the whole "cost curve". Instead, Democrats think they can put all of the non-cash savers into another bill so it cannot be scored in a negative way by the CBO.
