Boondoggle of boondoggles.

• Author: Emord, Jonathan W.
• Position: HEALTH BEAT - Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

AS WITH ALL MAJOR entitlement reform programs of late, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act came with rosy predictions that it would be affordable and expand, not reduce, coverage. Indeed, its very purpose was to cause some 30,000,000 Americans said to be uninsured to receive health insurance. Based on recent Congressional Budget Office predictions, however, ObamaCare will not be affordable for the government nor for seniors--and will not offset health insurance losses.

Indeed, the program Hill cost at least double its projected $940,000,000,000 price tag, leave 30,000,000 people uninsured by 2022, and increase the cost of and reduce the availability of services for seniors on Medicare. ObamaCare is, in short, another Federal boondoggle and, indeed, worse than a waste of money; it promises to destroy the quality and diversity of medical care in the U.S., undoubtedly contributing to a rise in preventable illness and deaths.

Were it not for its imposition of one trillion dollars in new taxes over the next decade, ObamaCare would appear as an addition to the Federal deficit. Likely, as the true costs of the program come to be known and as the costs of implementation are calculated into the equation, ObamaCare will add to the deficit despite its tax increases.

CBO has revised its estimate of the cost. One year ago, the figure of $940,000,000,000 often was quoted by Pres. Barack Obama, leaving serious economists disgusted because the figure arose from double counting

and manipulation of the start date from its actual kickoff to a false start date of 2010 (thus diminishing the 10-year estimate of costs). Now, as the program gets going (if you can call it that), CBO estimates are beginning to rise--and they likely will rise again and again in years to come. At present, CBO predicts the costs to be 1.76 trillion dollars.

Within the White House, considerable angst attended the President's decision to favor a universal health insurance mandate rather than a single-payer system of socialized medicine. Those individuals were buoyed, however, by ObamaCare provisions that permitted high-risk individuals to be shifted from private insurers to state funded agencies through the exchanges and by further provisions that compelled a significant increase in the states' Medicaid programs.

Although the Supreme Court neutered ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion program by effectively making it volitional, the advocates of socialized medicine still are having...