Healthcare

According to a June 14, 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) trust fund is on track to run out of money by 2018. Although the SSDI’s financial woes have been exacerbated by a dramatic increase in claims resulting from a weak economy, the program’s problems run much deeper.

Each year, Americans lose tens of billions of their hard-earned tax dollars to Medicare and Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse. The most recent estimates from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) indicate that there was nearly $48 billion in improper payments for Medicare and $22.5 billion in the federal share of improper payments in Medicaid in fiscal year 2010. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg and do not include the countless, undocumented occurrences of theft carried out by organized crime rings aimed at defrauding Medicare, the stealing and selling of beneficiary numbers on the black market, and the creation of front groups and fake doctors’ offices that cheat the system at the taxpayers’ expense.

The strange world of congressional budget scoring obscures whether Obamacare saves or costs money, but it also provides insight into why the federal government is in such a financial mess. Revenue and cost figures are thrown about in an attempt to justify each side’s position. Understanding the relevant facts provides a clearer picture of reality.

Over the past two years, taxpayers have watched the national debt climb to a frightening $13.7 trillion as Congress and President Obama massively enlarged the size and scope of the federal government against the will of the people.  Americans have simply had enough of the bailouts, tax hikes, earmarks, onerous regulations, and seemingly endless number of “jobs” bills.  The passage of President Obama’s landmark healthcare legislation, however,was perhaps most symbolic of Washington’s reckless and profligate behavior. 

The new summer blockbuster “Inception” features spectacular special effect sequences of towering edifices exploding, crumbling, and otherwise disintegrating in a film that addresses the fine line between reality and a dream state.  Right before the film’s protagonists emerge from medically-induced dream states, they experience instability, turbulence, and ultimately the total collapse of their immediate physical environments.  These sequences, which are awesome to behold on the big screen, are reminiscent of what is happening now in the real world with regard to the fiscal projections made about President Obama’s healthcare bill, only a lot less entertaining. 

As taxpayers begin to grasp the sheer magnitude and the $787 billion price tag of H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the “stimulus,” more and more details are being exposed as policy makers have time to read and analyze the legislation.  There is one section of the bill that has little to do with stimulating the economy and everything to do with overseeing the kind of healthcare Americans will, or will not, receive in the future.