Monday, January 23, 2012

More Obamacare Gimmickry Exposed

In addition to a discussion of rationing, the New Yorker article on the Obama presidency also includes nuggets further undermining the allegation that Obamacare was a fiscally responsible measure.  In a passage relating details of the President’s February 2010 budget submission, reporter Ryan Lizza noted that the President’s advisers “told [Obama] that he needed to cut $85 billion in spending in order to submit a fiscally credible budget to Congress.”  So what did they do?

They resorted to gimmickry.…The White House could also save billions by fiddling with the way it presented savings from Obama’s health care reform bill.  Check.”

The article doesn’t reveal what specific gimmicks the White House used regarding Obamacare in the February 2010 budget; some would argue that’s because the bill was full of so many gimmicks that it would be difficult to highlight a single one.  However, we do know – because liberal groups recently admitted this fact – that by the early 2010 timeframe discussed in Lizza’s piece, the Administration knew privately that the CLASS Act Ponzi scheme was fiscally unsustainable.  But did the Administration admit this fact publicly?  Heavens no.  Instead they relied on tens of billions of dollars in fake savings from CLASS to argue that the bill was paid for – while knowing full well these “savings” would never materialize.

Lizza’s piece also notes that the Obama domestic agenda was based upon “unrealistic assumptions made during the campaign.”  And how.  A bill estimated to cost “$50-65 billion a year when fully phased in” in reality will cost more than $200 billion by the end of the decade – and a promise to cut premiums by $2500 per family has turned into a law that will instead raise insurance premiums on the individual market by $2,100 per household.

Back in 2010, then-OMB head Peter Orszag – piqued at those who would question his fiscal self-righteousness – wrote a blog post stating that Obamacare was not relying on a “business-as-usual Washington gimmick.”  Republicans knew all along that these statements were at best highly skeptical, and at worst downright disingenuous.  As more and more time transpires, the record increasingly shows that Democrats knew the exact same thing.