What A Shocker: Obamacare Isn't Going To Save Money

What A Shocker: Obamacare Isn't Going To Save Money

From the April 23, 2010 New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law is getting a mixed verdict in the first comprehensive look by neutral experts: More Americans will be covered, but costs are also going up.

Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance -- adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.

These are the professional actuaries in charge of planning--not political hacks.

Look, I think getting every citizen and legal immigrant covered is a fine goal, especially since many of the uninsured are in that state because of poverty.  Some of that poverty, without question, is self-inflicted.  (Money for cigarettes, pot, and alcohol, but not for health insurance.)  But some of it is not self-inflicted.  A Christian commonwealth has an obligation to provide for at least the basics of life, as I have blogged before.  (In spite of the best efforts of the left, the dominant values of America are still Christian.)

What frosts me is the pretense that insuring tens of millions of Americans was going to somehow save enough money to cover the costs.  There are some cost savings that come from getting everyone into the pool, but not enough to cover the inflation of costs caused by this increased effective demand.  Pretending otherwise was just dishonest.  I find myself increasingly thinking of Obamacare as a method of forcing future tax increases that just happened to have a health insurance program attached.