Healthcare Think Tank--> ObamaCare Will Cost Up To FOUR TRILLION

Dr. Stephen T. Parente of the University of Minnesota and HSI Network testified before congress on Tuesday, he provided an financial assessment of each and every version of the ObamaCare plan. To model the plan he used  ARCOLA, a micro-simulation methodology initially funded by the Department of  Health and Human Services which was peer reviewed in the  Journal Health Affairs.

At best, the results are chilling. Based on his opening statement, depending on the version of the plan, and the percent of the uninsured the plan covers, ObamaCare could cost up to $4 Trillion Dollars over a ten year period.

• Our early assessment of the Senate Finance committee proposal shows a 74% reduction in the uninsured with a 10 year cost  2.7 trillion using public option plan modeled after the Massachusetts Connector. We also modeled an FEHBP version of the public plan and got a cost of over 1.3 trillion, but with a 30% reduction in the uninsured.
  

• CBO scored the Kennedy Bill last week at approximately a 30% reduction [of uninsured people]for 1 trillion over ten years. Using the ARCOLA model, we found nearly everyone would be covered if all elements of the Kennedy bill were enacted at a ten year cost of 4 trillion. At this time, we are the only group yet to score the full Kennedy proposal. (If you would like to see the full analysis of this bill including how they got to their budget numbers) 

The full analyisis concludes:

The plan lowers the uninsured significantly, to less than 1% of the population, but not without a cost of over four trillion dollars over 10 years. There are no provisions in the legislation to offset this course. Even if the most generous estimate of the employer sponsored tax exclusion ($300 billion per year, including collecting FICA contributions from employers) where used and combined with fraud estimates and block granting all of Medicaid (acute and long term care2), this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality. Finally, the public plans will be quite successful in recruiting large numbers of Americans. They will also likely crowd out at 79 million individual
contracts with existing private insurers.

Seperately, Parente analyzed the house version of the plan:

• The plan lowers the uninsured significantly, to less than 3% of the population, but not
  without a cost of nearly $3.5 trillion dollars over 10 years. There are no provisions in the legislation to offset this course. Even if the most generous estimate of the employer sponsored tax exclusion ($300 billion per year, including collecting FICA contributions from employers) were used and combined with fraud estimates and block granting all of Medicaid (acute and long term care2), this would be a challenging proposal to finance with budget neutrality. Finally, the public plans will be quite successful in recruiting large numbers of Americans. They will also likely crowd out 64 million individual contracts with existing private insurers.

Needless to say this report has not made the Tax Cheating Chairman of the house ways and means chairman, Charlie Rangel is not very happy and roundly critisized ARCOLA and the HSI Network's report. HSI Network countered on a point by point basis here.

Lets put that into perspective, the entire 2010 federal budget of the US for 2010 is $3.6 trillion. These plans will cost  $2.7-4.0 trillion dollars, think about what that will do to the buget, the burden that will put on your kids, and grand children. On top of that 64-70 million people will be forced to take the government option.