Oopsycare!
Neil Munro writes on The Daily Caller of what is either a big fat Obamacare sneaky or, more charitably, a huge mistake -- the fact that cost estimates seem to hide an understatement of $50 billion a year:
Federal payments required by President Barack Obama's health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts ignore the cost of insuring many employees' spouses and children, according to a new analysis. The result could cost the U.S. Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars during the first ten years of the new health care law's implementation."The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage," said Richard Burkhauser in a telephone interview Monday. Burkhauser is an economist who teaches in Cornell University's department of policy analysis and management. On Monday the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper on the subject that Burkhauser co-authored with colleagues from Cornell and Indiana University.
Employees and employers can use the rules to their own advantage, he said. "A very large number of workers" will be able to apply for federal subsidies, "dramatically increasing the cost" of the law, he said.
Oh, and by the way, the 10-year total would be $500 billion. (A pity we can't all start working eight days a week to pay for this.)
Part of the problem is that costs have skyrocketed lately to outrageous, almost ridiculous levels. I'm not really sure when it became acceptable to charge two hundred dollars for a bottle of thirty pills or five hundred dollars for 10ml of antibiotic eardrops, but that's becoming the norm for more and more medications. You have to have insurance to afford these outrageous costs, and if you don't have insurance you are well and truly screwed.
I read someone's blog lamenting that it costs a hundred dollars to go to the hospital in Japan and wondering who could possibly afford the health care there. Here an outpatient stay costs easily twenty times that much, if you don't have insurance.
Sarah at August 13, 2011 1:14 AM
A story about being nice to people.
Rule of thumb: Don't use the disasters happening to distant people as an excuse to go shopping.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at August 13, 2011 10:03 AM
I'm not really sure when it became acceptable to charge two hundred dollars for a bottle of thirty pills
When lawyers started buying air time to pimp their services, particularly if the victims could be considered a "class"?
I R A Darth Aggie at August 13, 2011 10:47 AM
Crid,
That is just sad.
Many years ago I stopped giving cash directly to charities. They only get cash is if I get something in return. My last company was a big supporter of Relay for Life/American Cancer Society. They would have casual weeks for cash and did various raffles. Even if I didn't win the raffles, I'd take it off on my taxes. I would donate time as well. (That looked good on my reviews.)
About the only charity that gets direct cash any more is the Salvation Army kettles around Christmas. And that is generally less than $10.
I'll be personally charitable to someone I know is struggling to make ends meet.
The Red Cross can go fuck themselves. They are getting about as bad as they come in some regions.
Jim P. at August 13, 2011 6:43 PM
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