The Health Care Check

The Emperor has noted with skepticism the Obamanites claim that the Health Care bill in Congress will only cost $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The House version of the plan claims to provide health insurance to an additional 13% of the population below 65. Assuming the realm has a population of 308 million people and that the percentage of my subjects who are under 65 years of age is 87.2 that means the new plan will cover an additional 35 million people.

If the cost of the plan is $1.2 trillion, then the plan will only cost $34,000 per person for the first 10 years. However, the cost per person is a little misleading as the benefits don't kick in until after 2014. Thus, the $1.2 trillion really only covers about six years and costs about $200 billion per year.

Of course, the Emperor believes that the actual figures will be much higher. The costs are based on figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which, based on their past efforts, will be grossly underestimated. In 1965 the CBO estimated that the firs-year cost of Medicaid would be $238 million. The actual cost was $1 billion--four times as high. In 1965 the CBO also estimated the cost of Medicare would be $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost was $90 billion--7.5 times as high!

The Emperor thinks it is laughable that the CBO thinks it has any idea what this new Health Care bill will cost. All that my beloved subjects can be certain of is that it will cost much, much, more than the Obamanites say it will.