Thursday, November 5, 2009

GOP health bill has smaller deficit reduction and insures fewer people than Dem plan

What an unexpected result.
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8 comments:

TJE said...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091102/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_care_overhaul

November 5, 2009 at 11:25 AM
evan said...

It covers 3 million more people and maybe lowers premiums (or maybe it doesn't--CBO estimates a zero to 3% premium drop.) What if it's zero?

November 5, 2009 at 12:23 PM
evan said...

You can't just ignore the fact that the CBO scored the Dem bill better because it contains tax increases that you don't like. Taxes don't make it "less" deficit-neutral.

November 5, 2009 at 12:42 PM
evan said...

The GOP has no reason for those taxes in their bill. They pay for actually getting the vast majority of currently-uninsured people insurance. The GOP plan shows no desire to do that--it wants slow and incremental change. Those taxes aren't just because Democrats LOVE taxing people, they exist as a means of providing many of the currently uninsured with insurance.

November 5, 2009 at 1:34 PM
TJE said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/prescriptions_for_disaster_lrgi3GBjbGlIZFrM8hHXJO

November 5, 2009 at 1:46 PM
evan said...

Our brilliant op-ed writer is guilty of really bad math that's common in this debate: "To give an idea of how much $1.7 (or $1.8) trillion is, let's compare it to private insurance companies' profits. The 10 largest insurance companies in America (according to the Fortune 500) last year had combined profits of $8 billion. You could double that, and it still would be less than 1 per cent of $1.7 trillion."

That 1.7 trillion, by the author's own admission, is over the course of ten years. (Even if the "ten year window" he creates is a silly one; the CBO scores bills ten years from their inception as standard practice, always.) The $8 billion is over one year.

Assuming the Department of Defense budget remains unchanged at about $680 billion dollars per year (and it'll go up, but I'll assume that it won't,) while we spend $1.7 trillion on healthcare, with all of the money at least theoretically accounted for, we will spend 6.8 trillion on national defense with no reasonable plan on how to make up that money.

I fail to see how these bills are exceedingly fiscally irresponsible compared to other policies undertaken over the last ten years.

November 5, 2009 at 3:15 PM
TJE said...

Isn't your argument with President Obama?

November 5, 2009 at 3:46 PM
evan said...

It's with an establishment that all of the sudden started freaking out about spending money, when they had no qualms about other, less constructive, more expensive endeavors.

November 5, 2009 at 4:17 PM

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