After months of heated debate and partisan rhetoric, the time has finally come. Nobody is completely happy with the health care reform bill, and many people still have their doubts even if they voiced support for the plan.
Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) had been voicing strong opposition because the bill lacked a public option, in the end however, he changed his stance in order to fight for something, anything, which looks remotely like reform.
According to the CBO, a non-partisan body organized to provide cost estimates on pending legislation, the health reform package would cost $940 billion over a ten-year span. It should be noted that this averages out to just $94 billion annually, and the program fits completely within the U.S. budget.
According to the CBO projections, this bill will cover 32 million of this nation's 47 million uninsured; bringing the national total to nearly 95 percent coverage. It will reduce the deficit by roughly $138 billion over the first ten years, and by $1.2 trillion over twenty years.
Since the health care package is a fully "budgeted" item, it does not really cost the U.S. anything. Unlike the wars and bailouts, which are largely non-budgeted, the sources of funding for this legislation have already been lined out.
Since the proposal is already budgeted, the costs are a non-issue. Instead, we must focus on the savings. By implementing this program, which is hopefully just the first in a series of comprehensive reforms, the U.S. will see average savings of $13 billion per year for the next ten years. If we simply follow this program for twenty years, without more progressive updates, we will save nearly $120 billion each year on average.
Under the previous system private insurance would virtually bankrupt the economy within twenty years. Under the revised system we can begin to contain those growing costs.
Republicans, and their conservative media cohorts, have already questioned the validity of the CBO estimates. Stopping short of actually calling the CBO liars, the editorial board of Investor's Business Daily, instead implicates that the Democrats intentionally misled the government's best economists. The column then proposes that, without any data to back up its claim, the real cost is 166 percent higher.
Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio) stated on Fox News, that the CBO score was a "fallacy" at the very least.
The Democrats, according to him, are simply lying about the figures. The Democrats are trying to steal from the public, and the rich, and defy the Constitution.
Basically, other than making baseless personal attacks, the Republicans have little real opposition to speak of.
The fact of the matter is, this country is horrendously in debt. One reason for that debt is the fact that our government had no way of keeping medical costs down.
Most countries have universal coverage, it works smoothly, people pay taxes, there is no fleecing of the rich, and there are no horrible evil underpinnings.
The bill's passage demonstrates that Washington is willing to do something other than collect endorsement checks from corporate interest groups.
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