Surprise!
It is hard to understate the fiscal importance of a recently released paper from the Office of the Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
And yet the document received only a shoulder shrug from the media and a complete blackout from Democrats. It’s easy to see why.
The back-story is that a group of trustees monitors the Medicare program and releases an annual report outlining the program’s current and projected fiscal condition. (The same is true for Social Security.)
However, the trustees’ projections must follow whatever the law says.
So, for example, if federal law says Medicare will only be allowed to grow by some designated annual growth rate, that’s what the trustees have to assume in their projections — regardless of whether they believe those spending limitations will actually occur.
Fortunately, Medicare’s Office of the Actuary doesn’t have to live in the political dream world.
For the third time since Democrats pushed through ObamaCare in 2010, the office has released a “memorandum” to highlight the challenges — to put it mildly — the government faces in adhering to the Medicare and Medicaid growth rates imposed by the president’s health care law.
More at IBD
All estimates, whether they be for war or social programs, ultimately end up costing more than anticipated. We need to decide whether we’re ready to assume these cost over-runs. Our politicians have decided they are ready to absorb them for war—now we need to decide whether they are going to be acceptable for social programs. The US already ranks near the bottom with Romania as far as the highest rates of childhood poverty among industrialized nations http://www.unicef.org/media/media_62521.html —maybe we’d rather cut-off aid to children and have them begging in the street, like Mexico.
Taxmaggeddon is real and a whole lot of it is ObamaCare based.
Just think of all of the medical equipment companies/suppliers which will be forced out of business after the medical equipment tax kicks in.
Need a wheelchair?
How about dialysis?
Or a heart valve?
You might find the physical equipment to be much pricier and or more Chinese look-alike-but-act-like-crap compared to now.
I am reading on business pages that many of our medical equipment makers will be going under or importing foreign made junk to keep from raising prices.
Are these unintended consequences of ObamaCare…..Or is this EXACTLY what Obama had in mind?