Congressional Budget Office hides costs of health care bill
December 17th, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |By not accounting for the cost to taxpayers of mandatory insurance, the Congressional Budget Office is hiding the true cost of the Senate health care “reform” bill. Michael Cannon at Cato writes that:
CBO’s score of the Clinton health plan is that the private-sector mandates accounted for around 60 percent of the Clinton health plan’s total cost, the remainder being (traditional) government spending.
Peter Suderman at Reason comments:
Some argue that we shouldn’t count the cost of the mandate because it’s private spending. That ignores the coercion involved. Think of it this way: If the government required that every adult pay the IRS a few thousand dollars, and then the government took that money and used it to pay a conglomerate of health insurance companies, there’s no question that it would count as government spending. But if the government instead forces individuals to give their money directly to one of those insurance companies, it’s not — yet there’s really not much difference.
For similar views on this, see Mandatory insurance is a tax.
tags: Congressional Budget Office, HR 3590, mandatory insurance, Obama Care, politician credibility, taxes
