Wall Street Journal: Healthcare Overhaul a ‘Fiasco’
EmailThe opinion page of the Wall Street Journal seizes on the news this week about the cost of health care reform. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the health care plan being worked up in the Senate Finance Committee will cost on the order of $1.6 trillion. While the White House made it clear the Senate bill is not the administration's bill, President Obama was banking on a considerably lower price tag in an effort to cover the 50 million Americans currently without health insurance.
An editorial in today's Journal pounces: "This was supposed to be a red-letter week for national health care, as Democrats started the process of hustling a quarter-baked bill through Congress to reorganize one-sixth of the economy on a partisan vote. Instead it was a fiasco.
Most of the devastation was wreaked by the Congressional Budget Office, which on Tuesday reported that draft legislation from the Senate Finance Committee would increase the federal deficit by more than $1.6 trillion over the next decade while only partly denting the population of the uninsured."
The paper predicts how this will all play out: "Capitol Hill's entitlement Democrats are determined too press ahead, despite this cost detour. Still, this week's lesson is that ObamaCare might not be inevitable once Americans figure out the astonishing price tag."
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1.6 Trillion over 10 years; we sp[end over 2 trillion a year on Health Care.
2 trillion a year; 1.6 Trillion in ten years.
What the hell is the problem?
Posted by: Thinking | June 19, 2009, 2:53 pm 2:53 pm
Dear Thinking, try thinking.
The problem is there will still be around 30 some million uninsured, we don’t have the 1.6 Trillion to spend and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Time for a prayer.
Please God,
Whatever the bonehead politicians in Washington come up with let me keep my health care coverage I have now.
Keep me unaffected by what my government does.
Let me provide for my family as I see fit.
Please keep me safe and protect me from Obamacare.
Amen.
Posted by: Noz | June 19, 2009, 4:12 pm 4:12 pm
The original estimated for Medicare and Medicaid was 12 billion the real number was 15 times that so lets that makes that 1.6 trillion a more likel7 24 trillion. (The United States does not spend 2 trillion a year on Health Care and every time the reformers start to through around numbers they conveniently role in every imaginable expense from athletes foot creme to purley elective surgeries like nose jobs and eye list that are paid for in cash by the people getting the service) The plan leaves 10 of millions uninsured. This on top of the fact that this president has saddled my grandchildren with debt. With the likely 24 Trillion dollar price tag what is being being proposed is not Health Care reform but is indentured servitude for every working American in the hope that it might buy the president and his party a few more votes
Posted by: RIck Partridge | June 19, 2009, 4:22 pm 4:22 pm
Bottom line here folks with all these “estimates” & “projections”….
THEY ARE NEVER EVER right! AND THEY ARE NEVER ON THE HIGH SIDE!
That goes for both sides of the aisle!
Posted by: Mike_C | June 20, 2009, 1:43 am 1:43 am
Maybe health care should fall under the FDA. Alot of us are as big as grazing cattle-following the herd. When did people stop looking in the mirror? What can be overhauled without costing a penny? Not letting drug companies on our TV sets unless they actually CURED something. WAY too much asking my doctor if its “right for me”. Thats obscene wrong!!! It’s a giant Lawyer-Insurance-Hospital back scratch!! We are bound for taking care of all the human double-wides. Eat less, excercise more–that’s free.
Posted by: Mike | June 21, 2009, 2:20 am 2:20 am
Let me tell you something, Obama had his Dukakis moment when he refused to say he would use the National Healthcare system he is promoting for the Prolitariet if anyone in his family were gravely ill..Well this isn’t surprising; the Bureaucrats of any Socialist/Marxist government take the spoils and give the Prolitariet the scraps..and Obama showed his true elitist colors…Wow! That was a moment that I enjoyed viewing. I had wanted to boycott the whole show, but was curious because I figured Prof. Gibson would give him a pass with questions, but as I tuned in for a few minutes, that doctor asked him that question about him promising to use the healthcare system and he refused to commit. WEll, well, well….I knew he was an empty suit and a hypocrite, and this proves it. You at ABC did not do yourselves any justice by refusing to have the opposition ask any questions, and you gave Obama too much time to go on and on with his infomercial and retoric. He lies very well..it is so amazing. Talk about overexposure…this man thinks he is in the novel 1984 where the supreme leader is on TV 24 hours a day…So this really bombed for you ABC, and maybe you learned your lesson. You were all used by the administration and your ratings I hear tanked. Understand this, the majority of people in the U.S. do not want this Obamacare program, they are happy with their own insurance. For the poor, there is medicaid. For the illegal aliens, let them go back home, get a visa, and apply for citizenship just like my daughter in law did and all in her family, and maybe they will stop using our hospitals. But to give them free healthcare? This is outrageous! Then he wants to give them amnesty so he has a built in voting block? He should close the borders. So I am so glad you at ABC and the Messiah bombed…It was fantastic to see him sweat with that question..but let me tell you something, you damaged your reputation; your integrity; your objectvity and you all showed your bias. You became a tool of the White House and it was so embarrassing. I believe many people boycotted this program..because of the negative publicity and your refusal to have the opposition on..and you blew it. Next time, tell Obama to call a press conference. I hope reporters start being harder on him…I love to see him lose his cool..he is such a phony and under that austere exterior is an angry Marxist who wants to change our way of life…You all promoted this empty suit with no experience and you made him the Messiah and now he is an inadequate President so now we have to live with it because you did not vett him properly and gave him all soft ball questions; and never asked him the questions that were pertinent and important..so now do you have second thoughts about this empty suit? Think ABC. You are losing your independence..Disney owns you and Walt Disney would be turning over in his grave.
Posted by: tressa | June 25, 2009, 11:36 pm 11:36 pm