paying for health care reform

well you have to hand it to nancy pelosi for her ability to twist arms and cut deals right to the end in order to get the health care reform bill passed by 3 votes. we may not be able to sustain another bloated entitlement program but just try to "take away" the peoples health care once it is enacted.

of course we dont start seeing too many benefits right away, but we sure do get to start paying for it. thats right, the federal government will be collecting taxes for 10 years to pay for 6 years of health care. and you WILL pay. in fact part of the bill adds 16000+ IRS agents to the federal payroll to be sure you do.

to better understand the budgetary gimmicks being employed in order to show that this reform bill will save the country money, check out this piece from douglas holtz-eakin in the ny times. he is the former director of the congressional budget office so im assuming he knows what hes talking about. heres his short answer as to why the current CBO analysis shows the healthcare reform bill saving money:

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out. (emphasis mine)

In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.

since were talking about federal entitlement programs, did anyone find it a tad ironic that the same week that the healthcare reform bill was signed into law that a report came out stating that for the 1st time social security "will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016."

im betting that social security wont be allowed to fail because, well, just try taking away someones benefits after they are already receiving them.