Lipstick on a Pig
Like my grandfather used to say, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
This week, we saw the leadership of the U.S. Senate attempt a political maneuver that is analogous to “putting lipstick on a pig” by forcing the Congressional Budget Office to respond to a request of an analysis of a bill that simply does not exist. The CBO provided the analysis and the main stream media took the ball and ran with it acting as though Moses had come down from Mount Sinai with the report etched in stone to declare that the Baucus bill had heaven’s approval. The problem is when historical Moses did come down from Sinai with stone tablets; there were no caveats or fine print as is the case with this CBO report.
There is a huge political game going on here – called The Big Lie – and we as taxpayers are the big losers. The Big Lie here is that the CBO did not provide an estimate of the Baucus bill – in fact, the report clearly states that “CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.” [1] In plain English: THERE IS NO BILL TO ANALYZE! Therefore, the report is a preliminary analysis on some ideas being put forward by the Committee on Finance. These ideas are woefully incomplete; therefore the analysis is woefully inaccurate.
To make matters worse, there are multiple “bills” progressing through the Senate, not just the Baucus Bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that he plans on taking bits and pieces from multiple bills to “craft” a Senate bill on health care reform. So, the CBO analysis submitted with respect to the Baucus “mark” is moot and this weeks action by Baucus and the CBO is a political rouse on the American people.
What the American people really deserve is to see a CBO report based on actual legislative language from the Senate Health Care Reform bill that will be put to a vote – BEFORE the Senate votes on the bill. Any Senator that votes on this bill without having 1) read the bill 2) read a full and complete CBO analysis of the bill 3) allowing time for the American people to read the bill and comment on it should be voted out of office at the earliest opportunity.
There’s another old saying: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” If you’re like me, you read the headlines and wondered, “How on earth can the government increase spending by $829 billion dollars and reduce the deficit at the same time? That sounds too good to be true!” You’re right, it is too good to be true and here’s a few reasons why:
- The cost estimate of $829 billion dollars is not only based on an incomplete bill, but is most likely well short of what the actual costs will be. If history is a good teacher, then we need to think about previous government cost estimates and compare those to real costs. Here is an example of the accuracy of both a long term and a short term cost projection and the actual costs [2]:
- 1965 Medicare Cost Estimate $12 billion in 1990. Actual: $100 billion
- 2007 SCHIP five year cost estimate of $47.5 billion. Actual: $70 billion
- Hidden Taxes are taxes the government places on corporations, manufactures, importers, and suppliers that consumers ultimately will pay. This “make business pay their fair share” rhetoric is a farce. With this kind of thinking, the government simply juxtaposes business between the taxman and the people. This is simple math… raise the tax on a business and the business will raise the price of its goods and services. In the end, the taxpayer pays. The Baucus bill raises a number of taxes through this back-door approach:
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- A 10-30% tax surcharge on Medical Devices and Diagnostic Equipment to the tune of $40 billion dollars. Examples include: surgical equipment, diabetes testing supplies, joint replacements, pacemakers, stents, MRIs, and CT Scanners. [3]
- A 35% excise tax on insurance companies offering so called “gold-plated” insurance plans. The tax is on the difference between what the government says the premium limit should be ($8K annually for an individual) and the amount paid above that. Again, this cost will be passed on to consumers in higher premiums for everyone.
- Tax on people who opt out not to purchase health insurance. This tax ranges from $750 for an individual to $3,800 for a family. For young health people who simply want to purchase catastrophic insurance – or no insurance at all – it may be cheaper for them to simply pay the tax. [4]
- Mandate to purchase health insurance – this is the biggest hidden tax of all. The reason the government is forcing people/business to purchase health insurance is so that premiums paid by the middle-class, upper-middle-class, and wealthy can be used to pay subsidize the lower middle-class and the poor. The cost of health care premiums for a family of four will be approximately $14,400 annually [4]. For millions of middle-class families this amounts to a 20% tax increase. When the government forces you to pay, this is a tax – another old saying: “A rose by any other name is still a rose.”
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- “Cuts in Spending” are “vapor savings – the CBO analysis on the Baucus non-bill claims that one way the bill will funded is through “$110 billion in net savings from other sources” [1]. These “other sources” include cuts to Medicare Advantage plans as well as cuts in Medicare payments to providers. This is a gutting of the Medicare program depended on by our senior citizens [5]. The lie here is simply this, funding through cuts does not work for two big reasons:
- First, the cuts usually don’t happen or are severely watered down by the time they are implemented.
- Second, the savings from the cuts are not re-directed to the costs of the legislation in question precisely because they are “vapor savings” – there is no money to redirect.
- The Baucus non-bill does not achieve the goal of covering Americans. In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress, Pres. Obama said that there were 30 million people in America who were without medical insurance (down from 47 million in his earlier speeches). According this CBO report, there will still be “25 million nonelderly residents uninsured” [1]. So, we are going to implement this huge new entitlement program and the end result will be only 5 million of the uninsured are now insured.
Please, somebody wipe the lipstick off this pig and put it back in the pen with the rest of the pork.
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