Each time a new study or report sheds light on the Obamacare’s true effects on Americans’ health care, the left fights back with tiresome accusations that the source is disreputable, partisan or “sides” with the insurance companies, ad nauseum.
How many professional experts are going to have to find fault with the House and Senate health bills before the Left and their allies in Congress stop repeating the age-old adage: “Everyone else is crazy, I alone am sane”? The terrible truth, of course, is that these reports are right.
In study after study, a few things about Obamacare stand out. Both the House and Senate bills will impose new taxes to pay for health care reform, many of which will affect low and middle income Americans, not just the rich. Both bills expand coverage by adding millions of Americans to Medicaid, one of the lowest-quality government health programs. Despite the President’s promise that “if you like it, you can keep it,” millions of Americans will lose the private insurance they currently have. And, no matter how you slice it, neither bill will “bend the cost curve” in health care spending; to the contrary, both bills increase national health expenditures above official projections under current law. It’s no surprise, then, that the majority of Americans oppose the big Congressional health bills , with 57% of Americans believing Obamacare will cause health care costs to go up, and 52% expecting the quality of care to decrease as well.
Though each study uses different methodology and looks at slightly different things, here are three different independent reports to show that Americans’ expectations for the future under Obamacare are correct. The Department of Health And Human Services’ own Office of the Actuary for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Lewin Group, and the RAND Corporation’s study.
In the following table (a full version, including footnotes and sources, can be found here), we put these estimates side-by-side so ordinary Americans can judge for themselves who is and who is not telling the truth about the legislation.
