Let me see if I have all of this straight. The same Unaffordable Care Act that the Congressional Budget Office first said would explode the federal budget deficit and then was coerced by the Obama Regime into torturing its numbers until they fit the "bend the cost curve down" state-mandated fiction the White House wanted and which has been long-since exposed as the criminal fraud it is will INCREASE the federal deficit if it is repealed?
Run this by me again?:
Repealing President Barack Obama’s health- care overhaul would increase the federal budget deficit by $353 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Ending the Patient Pr[eda]tion and [Ua]ffordable Care Act would increase spending on Medicare while reducing outlays for health- insurance subsidies, Medicaid and coverage for poor children, the agency said in a report Friday. Repealing the law would probably boost the economy as more people sought work to get health insurance, reducing the net cost to $137 billion, the CBO said.
The report is a blow for Republican lawmakers who have sought to repeal and replace the [Un]ffordable Care Act ever since its passage in 2010. If the law were undone, about nineteen million more people would become uninsured in 2016, rising to twenty-four million by 2025, the CBO said.
Sure, the number of uninsured would go up and there'd be costs - in the short term. That's part of the insidiousness of entitlement programs in general and ObamaCare in particular: capture and enslave the weak and vulnerable, plunder the strong and productive to subsist them, and the resulting dependency, like a narcotic, inflicts pain when it's withdrawn. But the thing is, the association of pain with things that are good for us is not an uncommon thing. Breaking drug and alcohol addiction is the most illustrative example. Addicts will grow desperate, do anything, for one more fix; the pain becomes seemingly unbearable....but eventually it fades, the dependency is gone, and they feel and are much better and healthier for the necessary ordeal. And the point must always be emphasized, they got themselves into that predicament.
In the case of entitlement programs, the addiction is inflicted upon the weak and vulnerable by predatory socialists who want to leech them for political power and plunder the strong and productive for the resources with which to attain it, all justified by an impregnable self-righteous moral supremacism that serves as both internal superstructure and demagogic political defense against any attempt at challenge and reversal. And it's highly effective, which is why, as Ronald Reagan once said (paraphrased), "A government program is the closest thing to immortality that man will ever see in this life".
Wolverine....
....notwithstanding, of course.
And that is why the repeal of ObamaCare will be an even tougher sell than its corrupt, cram-down enactment, which the CBO's questionable analysis is not helping.
Contra that report, I would suggest that if ObamaCare were repealed, along with Medicare and Medicaid, and the free market allowed to fully function in the healthcare industry, the number of uninsured, properly defined as those who want coverage but are unable to attain it, would dwindle to what it's always been: approximately twelve million, give or take. And there are far better ways to take care of these people than using them as pawn-like pretexts for a bureaucratic nightmare designed to ultimately take real healthcare away from EVERYBODY and shackle them to the diktats of the almighty state.
Exit question: If this is what Keith Hall is going to come up with, why'd congressional Republicans replace Douglas Elmendorf?
UPDATE: New York Lieutenant-Governor and healthcare expert Betsy McCaughey calls the CBO report "gibberish":
A Congressional Budget Office report asserting a repeal of Obamacare would hike the federal budget deficit by $353 billion is "gibberish" — since a repeal would actually "be a huge tax cut for the American people," former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey told Newsmax TV Friday.
In an interview with "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth, the health policy expert declared "it may cost the government money, but it means you have the money."
"Let's decode this Washington gibberish," she explained. "What the CBO is really saying is that the taxes the Obamacare law force you to pay are much bigger than the benefits you get back. If the law is repealed, those taxes will no longer be taken out of your pocket, and so your tax cut will be bigger than the benefits you give up...."
From Washington's point of view, she noted, "that means it's costing them money. But guess what, it's saving you money."
"When they say they're canceling taxes, it costs them money," she added. "That's going to add to their deficit. But … it's going to mean you have money in your pocket to spend. So repealing Obamacare is going to be a huge tax cut for the American people."
You mean....it's our money and not theirs, Betsy? Not for six and a half years, it hasn't. Why would that change now?
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