House Health Care Bill Yields $9.2 Trillion in Deficits

Nicola Moore / July 31, 2009

Members of Congress have been working frantically to bring the cost of the health care bill below $1 trillion, make it “deficit-neutral,” per the President’s instructions, and meet Blue Dogs’ expectations that it be “paid for.” As the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, so far they’ve had no such luck.

But the bigger problem is that in focusing on $1 trillion, Congress is missing the forest for the trees.

All the estimates they evaluate are 10-year figures, yet nationalized health insurance, if it passes, will likely be around much longer than that. Longer-term estimates must therefore be examined to determine whether future promised benefits will really be paid for.

Turns out, funds are insufficient to the tune of $9.2 trillion, according to the Joint Economic Committee’s 75-year costs estimate of the House bill.

That’s big, but when you add it to the existing unfunded promises–which exceed $45 trillion–that already exist in Social Security and Medicare, the House health bill makes an already unaffordable and unsustainable budget worse. In fact, the unfunded promises of the health bill are bigger than the Social Security shortfall alone.

Without nationalized health care, the amount of money that would be required from every American, today, to close our current fiscal gap equals $184,000. If $9.2 trillion in new debt is added, that figure would exceed $214,000–an additional $30,000 per person.

Unless you can afford to write a $214,000 check to the government today or want to pass the buck onto future generations, you have to ask yourself: Can America really afford national health care right now?