Thanks Ezra.
Part of Klein's contribution to Democrat demise is perpetuating the belief that all people cared about was the total cost of the bill, which he once again argues, is really not so big when you consider say, what it would cost to build the entire fleet of Starships for the Federation. Well, okay, maybe not that much but here is Klein at his misleading and misinformed best:
"by the standards of the health-care system, it's not that big at all. It goes two-thirds of the way on covering the uninsured. It makes a courageous, but insufficient, start on cost control. This is the beginning, not the end, of reform.
Let's begin by breaking down the numbers. The $900 billion price tag is repeated with the regularity of a rooster's crow. That's a shame, as the number is, somewhat impressively, misleading in both directions.
On the one hand, that $900 billion is stretched over 10 years. But people don't think in 10-year increments. They don't pay taxes once a decade. Put more simply, the bill will cost an average of $90 billion a year.
But that number is meaningless without context. Ninety billion is a lot more than you probably paid for, say, your house. But is it a lot of money in the context of national health-care spending? Not really. In 2008, we spent $2.3 trillion on health care. Ninety billion is about 4 percent of that. In other words, a drop in the bucket."
voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/
I know that The Economist named Klein "minds of the moment" (there is a joke in that but I'll resist) but isn't there a difference between what we choose to spend on health care and what government will force us to spend? Put another way, that $90 billion a year drags along the rest of the spending by forcing people into Medicaid, choose only government approved plans with government approved benefits, paying taxes (not if you are a union member) for higher cost plans that you have no say in shaping which in turn will force you to spend money for premiums, deductibles, etc you may not want to pay or might have to if the services you really want are not covered.
Here is what Michael Cannon, who is a lot smarter and has done a lot more original research than Klein has said about this $90 billion scam:
"The CBO explains it will not count mandatory premiums as federal revenues if the individual mandate leaves consumers with what the CBO considers a "sufficient" or "meaningful" or "substantial" degree of choice among health plans. That rule is both amorphous and arbitrary. (For example, it presumes that the freedom not to purchase health insurance — which an individual mandate would eliminate — is not "meaningful." Millions of Americans would disagree.) More important, evading that rule doesn't make an individual mandate any less compulsory, or any less costly. It just hides those costs by pushing them off-budget.
In Massachusetts, which has enacted what is essentially the Democrats' health plan, mandatory premiums account for about 60 percent of overall costs, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. On-budget government spending is just 40 percent. By my count, mandatory premiums accounted for a similar share of the Clinton health plan's projected cost.
So while the CBO estimates that the coverage expansions in the House Democrats' legislation would trigger about $1 trillion of new federal spending over ten years, the actual cost of those coverage expansions is more like $2.5 trillion."
www.cato.org/pub_display.php
Actually, that $2.5 trillion over 5 years or so. Which is $5 trillion over ten years, both which equal $500 billion a year or so. Not to mean the loss of freedom and the dumb central planning involved to make this all happen.
Regular people -- amateurs -- get this. Experts like Klein who talk to other experts in DC do not. Their detachment from what we, the little people, can feel and perceive, formed by either arrogance or Economist-induced self-regard is stunning. And contributory to the growing sense across this nation that Democrats actually believe that health care is a system established to serve Washington interests instead of a series of human relationships that should sustain our lives and well-being.
