The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2003 that a new Medicare drug benefit would cost $518 billion. The price tag, slightly more than three years later: $382 billion, the agency reported.
The CBO predicted in 2008 that a plan to fight the housing crisis would help 400,000 Americans refinance $68 billion worth of mortgages; it ended up helping just a few dozen. And the budget office said it would cost $25 billion to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac afloat. It underestimated the cost by a factor of more than 10. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=axAynyxJQILE
The health care debate moves forward, but what we must ask ourselves is how much will this cost the American people. Spiraling cost of health care is crippling the competiveness of business and with a growing segment of society without health care insurance all add to broken nature of health care in this country. The problem that both sides have not answered is how to fix the problem? In July the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated that the current legislation in both the House and the Senate would cost the tax payer close to $1.6 trillion dollars and does nothing to reduce the cost of health care in this country. Every major piece of legislation has wildly been inaccurate in its budget forecasting. As the article mentioned, it came under in its Medicare drug benefit budgeting but came over budget in its bailout of Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae. We can’t be wrong on legislation that will transform almost 20% of the nation’s economy; if Congress is wrong then the nation will suffer!
No comments:
Post a Comment