- ~$1.8 Trillion
- ~>$1.1 Trillion
- ~$573 Billion
- ~$65 Billion
If you said ~$1.8 Trillion you were wrong. If you said ~$1.1 Trillion you were wrong, too.
The net cost after factoring in efficiencies, cost reductions, etc?
~$65 Billion.
The CBO's analysis of the bill is both short and fairly read-able. And you can read it here.
Are these cost reductions real? Or just smoke and mirrors? Are we really going to be able to bring our per-capita health care costs more in line with the rest of the developed world, improve outcomes, and prevent service problems that the right will try to use to make political hay -- i.e. "Kid waited a two years for a kidney due to govt. bureaucrats."
ReplyDeleteSorry if the post was misleading. These are not cost reductions, but cost to the federal budget (the "tilda" symbol "~" means "approximately.") So over 10 years, the bill will cost tax payers about $1.1 Trillion, but will save tax payers about $1.04 Trillion. Hence the net savings of $65 Billion.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, I think the bill is not going to solve all of our healthcare problems. It is PRIMARILY designed to address the issue of coverage. Once THAT is handled, I believe we can be more aggressive about addressing cost.
I mostly believe this because our system is too complicated to reform all at once--and doing so will provide too many opportunities for the right and entities with skin in the game to oppose specific elements of it thereby killing any reform at all.
And as for the making of political hay, its going to happen and there is nothing that can be done about it. Which is again why I think we can't engage in that discussion right now. Once we start to realize some of the benefits of reform, it will be easier to make the argument that we want to purchase quality and/or maximize QALYs. Remember, for every story about a kid waiting for a kidney transplant, there could be 10 about people that lost coverage when they were laid off.