Obama’s Great Health Care Bait-and-Switch

Ernest Istook / April 23, 2010

It’s called “bait-and-switch”–the sales tactic of conning customers into believing they’re getting a good product, but then delivering shoddy goods instead.

America, we’ve been conned.

Government actuaries—the official bean counters for national health care—just released the bad news from analyzing how President Obama’s new law affects medical costs and insurance. Their verdict? “More Americans will be covered, but costs are also going up,” is how the Associated Press summarized it.

The higher expense is on top of the prior expectations of already-rising costs,

The minimum increase from Obamacare is one per cent higher, they report, but the maximum is likelier to be far greater, the analysts warned, because the legislation’s projected Medicare savings are probably “unrealistic and unsustainable,” just as The Heritage Foundation and many others have been saying.

So who are these guys who are sounding the latest alarm? They’re the professional actuaries at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who typically operate with far greater independence than others who make official government projections. The Congressional Budget Office, for example, must follow rules handed down by Congress. The Office of Management and Budget is an extension of the White House and therefore governed by the President. (more…)