CBO SAYS BAUCUS BILL WILL STILL LEAVE 25 MILLION UNINSURED

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their preliminary analysis of America's Healthy Future Act of 2009, also known as the "Baucus Bill." Senator Max Baucus, the Democrat Senator from Montana and Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced the health care reform legislation at a press conference on September 22.

The main takeaway from CBO's initial analysis is that despite the hundreds of billions in additional government spending, the Baucus Bill, the latest in a series of never-ending versions of Obamacare, will still leave 25 million Americans uninsured!

As you may recall, President Obama proclaimed during his national healthcare address that, "There are now 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage." However, this uninsured number seems to be quite pliable considering that as recently as August 20, the president affirmed that there were "46 million uninsured" Americans. Which is it, 30 million or 46 million uninsured? Where did the 16 million go in such a short time?

Logically, using the president's most recent figure of 30 million uninsured (CBO has a different number as well), the Baucus Bill would only insure an additional five million of the uninsured. One would think that for $829 billion, CBO's projected ten year cost, a much higher percentage of the uninsured would be covered.

As far as the reliability in the government's long-term cost projections, it's advisable to consider the initial cost estimates for another insolvent big government health care scheme. In 1966, the United States implemented Medicare, which initially cost $3 billion annually. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with Lynden Johnson, predicted by 1990, Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion. What was the actual cost In 1990? How about over $107 billion, or nine times the initial cost estimate. Since then, government-run Medicare's costs have continued to skyrocket to over $420 billion.

The Baucus Bill calls on a plethora of ill-advised tax increases, as well as cuts in Medicare and Medicaid totaling $404 billion. The bill's tax increases not only clearly violate President Obama's repeated promise that he would not raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000 “one single dime,” but would assuredly increase consumers' insurance costs. Representatives from both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have testified before the Senate Finance Committee that these taxes will almost entirely be passed on to the consumer.

The Baucus Bill is unaffordable, increases taxes, increases an already bloated, bureaucratic federal government, increases the welfare state, and comes nowhere near accomplishing its goal of providing affordable health care coverage to all Americans.