Hiding the Costs in the "Private Sector"

Just got done listening to Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute talk about some of the secret costs that are hidden in the health care bill behind our backs.

According to a memo that was released by the Congressional Budget Office back in December, the Democrats in Congress have apparently been playing games with the CBO's rules on how the costs of the health care bill will be accounted. By requiring private sector mandates that fall just short of the 90 percent that would require it be included in the federal budget.

As Cannon put it (paraphrasing here): There is no real difference between the government requiring you to pay a tax for medical coverage and calling it a tax, and the government mandating a minimum premium that you'll have to buy and calling it a private-sector mandate. It's hardly "private-sector" or "free market" if the government is forcing you to buy something. Either way, you are out that money without making a free choice to buy.

So why are they doing it this way? Because this allows them to avoid including the involuntary payment in the CBO report on what the bill will cost, so they have been able to hide a huge amount of the costs of this bill.

Furthermore, that 90 percent amount is a purely arbitrary figure that the CBO has set.

From a recent blog post of Cannon's:

"Democrats have been submitting proposals to the CBO behind closed doors and tailoring their private-sector mandates to avoid having those costs appear in the federal budget. Proposals that would result in a complete cost estimate — such as the proposal by Sen. Rockefeller discussed in the Medical Loss Ratios memo — are dropped. Because we can’t let the public see how much this thing really costs.

Crafting the private-sector mandates such that they fall just a hair short of CBO’s criteria for inclusion in the federal budget does not reduce their cost, nor does it make those mandates any less binding. But it dramatically reduces the apparent cost of the legislation. It is the reason we’re all talking about an $848 billion Reid bill, rather than a $2.1 trillion Reid bill.

If someone sold you a house, or a car, or a mutual fund this way, we would put them in jail."

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