Beam me up, Scotty

This rant isn't really about health care, so bear with me.

The official democratic talking points now are:
1) How many Americans are covered (another 31 million or about 10%)
2) The reduction in the deficit

Except statement 2 is a downright lie. Here's why.
Nearly half the reduction in the deficit is coming from reductions in medicare that they are turning around and spending on those 31 16 million people - robbing seniors to pay slackers.



Most of the rest of the reduction is coming from fancy accounting related to federalizing the student loan program (thereby putting a few hundred thousand insured tax-paying Americans out of work). It has nothing to do with health care, but they need to apply the savings to the health care bill. The savings is bogus anyway. They are hoping no one will notice. Update: This is not confirmed. US Gov't will be the lender. US Gov't (treasury) will loan itself the funds at 2.25% interest. US Gov't will charge students 6.5%. Net income 4.24% of loaned amount per year. Minus expenses, of course. This is on their website. Current federal student loans from Sallie Mae (Stafford loans) range from 2.48 - 6.8% depending on a variety of factors. Sallie Mae

The bill that came from the Senate includes somewhere between 5-10% cut in reimbursements to physicians (robbing premium-paying producers to pay more slackers). The house has no intention of letting that happen, so that money is going to get voted back into medicare this spring. Why not now? Because if you include it, there ain't no deficit reduction!

Liars, liars, pants on fire!

Why do I say slackers? Well, besides making a good soundbite, you have to remember that people near or below the poverty level are already covered by medicaid, as are people who are disabled and cannot work. This is covering not even 31 million more people because a lot of those people will have to get and pay for their own insurance or their employers will have to. So, it is spending a trillion or so to cover some subset of 31 16 million (unconfirmed, the only # I found) people, and in the process screw most everyone else with less coverage and more taxes. Sounds like redistribution to me. (Correct my math if I'm wrong, but that looks like $58,750 per uninsured person. Gosh, will they have to pay the Cadillac tax, too?)

But you won't hear that from the democrats. Because? They Lie!!!!

Change!
01-20-2013