For Philistines like myself, the mysteries of Washington can be both perplexing and wondrous. If you’ve been watching noted alchemist and Democratic Sen. Max Baucus conjure up health-care gold this week, you probably know what I mean.
Mercifully, House and Senate Democrats recently blocked amendments that would have required health-care bills to be posted online for 72 hours before a committee vote, sparing us the needless irritation of grappling with fancy facts about the most consequential piece of legislation in recent memory.
No need to get into the weeds for you and me. No way. Just think of legislation as abstract art. The Congressional Budget Office does.
The CBO’s new estimate, which magically meets every one of President Barack Obama’s preconditions, is based on “conceptual” language provided by Baucus rather than any of those maddeningly specific Arabic numerals.
That’s because the estimate isn’t rooted in an actual bill, per se . . . nor does it incorporate hundreds of amendments that will be part of any final product, well, not exactly . . . What we do have is a CBO that has been browbeaten long enough by the White House to finally summon the conviction to get a figure that so many wanted to hear.
It’s also, believe it or not, free.
The Senate plan, which, according to the CBO, actually costs more than earlier estimates, rising from nearly $800 billion to $829 billion (or $904 billion, according to a number of economists), has triggered many excited journalists and politicians to claim that the bill would miraculously “pay for itself.”
Not only would it pay for itself — and this part is really wonderful — but government spending an additional $829 billion over the next 10 years will reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion.
How exactly does health care “reform” pay for itself in Wonderland? In this case, it pays for itself by charging taxpayers new “fees,” delivering new mandates and penalties, adding pass-through costs and cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare.
As you know, if there’s anything old folks — already prone to irascibility from time to time — absolutely adore, it’s the prospect of cutting their Medicare benefits. Yet, even those savings seem to defy reality.
One of the many assumptions in the Baucus plan is that there will be continual cuts in physician reimbursements, cuts that Congress has never allowed and precious few onlookers believe would be politically palatable. So without a major attitude adjustment in Washington, this savings is just fantasy, as well.
Not to worry, though, there are sure things. One of the most popular and cost-effective programs, Medicare Advantage, will take a hit of $117 billion through 2019.
This might seem somewhat mysterious to you. Then again, Advantage involves private insurance firms (a curse on their house!), which should be squashed like a cockroach.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf had previously warned that Medicare Advantage payment cuts had the potential to hurt seniors’ private health plans, which, of course, is the point of “reform.”
The most exhilarating aspect of this plan, however, isn’t that it does nothing to contain costs for average consumers, it’s that the average consumer will help pay for it long before they fail to receive any tangible benefits.
According to Democrats, health care reform must be passed this very moment even though it would not kick in until 2013. But don’t worry, it would start taxing Americans in 2010, three years before you get nothing.
All of this probably adds up to the most expensive dependency program yet devised.
Coming at a time when nation has hit 9.8 percent unemployment, with no help from Washington in sight, the latest Pew Research Center on the health care issue claims that “More people now generally oppose the health care reform proposals in Congress (47 percent) than favor them (34 percent).”
That 47 percent just doesn’t believe. They don’t believe higher taxes will bring down costs. They don’t believe that more spending can shrink the deficit. They can’t believe that fees aren’t taxes. Or, that an entitlement program, for the first time in history, will pay for itself.
What they do believe in is reality.
E-mail David Harsanyi at dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
