Jeffrey H. Anderson, author of the " small-bill" health-care reform proposal, has a piece in today's New York Post on the Baucus bill's skyrocketing cost. He emails:
Through yesterday's Senate Finance Committee vote, Senator Max Baucus managed to keep the focus on the projected 10-year costs of his health bill. The bill's 10-year price-tag of $829 billion is a ton of money, to be sure, but not enough to scare off folks who are used to moving in Capitol Hill circles. After all, that's only a few billion more than the cost of the "economic stimulus" package. But as my New York Post op-ed today details, the costs of the bill's second decade are jaw-dropping no matter what circles one frequents. In its second ten years, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, the costs of the Baucus bill would triple -- to $2.8 trillion. The taxes and fines it would levy would also triple -- to $1.8 trillion. And the amount it would redistribute from Medicare and related programs would quadruple -- to $1.9 trillion. The CBO projects that, in its first 20 years, BaucusCare would cost $3.6 trillion. That's even with a price-tag of $0 in 2010. If one starts the clock where the costs actually begin (in 2011), then, in its first 20 years, BaucusCare would cost $4 trillion. The bill's costs in its first ten years are being held down dramatically by clever accounting. The bill wouldn't be in full swing until 2015. Yet its 10-year costs are calculated starting not in 2015, but in 2010. The first half of the bill's official 10-year time-span contributes only 8 percent of its costs -- but doubles the span of time over which those costs can be said to have accrued. That's a bit like reporting that a baseball pitcher who allows six runs on Opening Day has let up only six runs in the last six months. An example highlights the extent to which the accounting is hiding the costs. If the dates shift merely one year, so from 2011 to 2020 rather than from 2010 to 2019, costs increase by $194 billion, taxes and fines by $109 billion, and cuts to Medicare and related programs by $114 billion. All of these tallies are according to CBO projections. Again, the bill wouldn't cost anything in 2010. In its real first decade, from 2011 to 2020, the bill would cost over $1 trillion -- setting up its $3 trillion encore. How would the Senate pay for the Baucus bill's $4 trillion 20-year tab? By lifting over $2 trillion from Americans' wallets and pilfering over $2 trillion from America's seniors. And how would it "save" $2 trillion from Medicare, a program already on the brink of financial insolvency and now awaiting the baby boomers' retirements? By gutting Medicare Advantage and by paying doctors half -- half! -- as much in real dollars for services to Medicare patients in 2025 as they would receive in 2010. Med school anyone? Any "Blue Dog" Democrat who even seriously sniffs at this looming fiscal nighmare belongs in the pound -- and would likely be sent there by the voters.