AP is at it again, with an article that says the House healthcare bill is way too expensive, and that "some moderate Democrats" might just not be able to bring themselves to spend that much. Oddly, author David Espo acknowledges both the favorable CBO report and the deficit reduction in the House bill, but still frames the story as healthcare reform breaking the bank.
WASHINGTON — Health care legislation taking shape in the House carries a price tag of at least $1 trillion over a decade, significantly higher than the target President Barack Obama has set, congressional officials said Friday as they struggled to finish work on the measure for a vote early next month.
Democrats have touted an unreleased Congressional Budget Office estimate of $871 billion in recent days, a total that numerous officials acknowledge understates the bill's true cost by $150 billion or more. That figure excludes several items designed to improve benefits for Medicare and Medicaid recipients and providers, as well as public health programs and more, they added.
The officials who disclosed the details did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Some moderate Democrats have expressed reluctance to support a bill as high as $1 trillion. Last month, Obama said in a nationally televised address before a joint session of Congress that he preferred a package with a price tag of around $900 billion.
Obama also said he would not sign a bill that raised deficits, and the CBO estimates the emerging House bill meets that objective. Officials said the measure would reduce deficits by at least $50 billion over 10 years and perhaps as much as $120 billion.
Democrats also said the bill would slow the rate of growth of the giant Medicare program from 6.6 percent annually to 5.3 percent.
"The bill will be paid for over 10 years. It will reduce costs but also will not add a dime to the deficit" in future years, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference.
So the next few days is going to be centered around the outrageous costs of providing healthcare. Democratic leaders will have to bend over backwards to explain that they are being as miserly as they could be attempting to fix the "system" that allows tens of thousands of people every year to die from lack of coverage. Justification they and the White House never had to provide, remarkably, when providing funding for the war in Iraq even after it was abundantly clear that the war was baseless and being conducted in the most incompetent manner.
Conveniently, Fred Hiatt decided to to take on the subject by answering a reader's challenge as to why the WaPo editors loved the idea of spending more and more money in Afghanistan, going into further debt for war, but insisted that providing universal health coverage had to be deficit neutral.
Glenn encapsulates the core of their response best:
The Post attempts to justify that disparity with their second answer, which perfectly captures the prevailing, and deeply warped, Beltway thinking: namely, escalating in Afghanistan is an absolute national necessity, while providing Americans with health care coverage is just a luxury that can wait:
All this assumes that defense and health care should be treated equally in the national budget. We would argue that they should not be . . . Universal health care, however desirable, is not "fundamental to the defense of our people." Nor is it a "necessity" that it be adopted this year: Mr. Obama chose to propose a massive new entitlement at a time of historic budget deficits. In contrast, Gen. McChrystal believes that if reinforcements are not sent to Afghanistan in the next year, the war may be lost, with catastrophic consequences for U.S. interests in South Asia. U.S. soldiers would continue to die, without the prospect of defeating the Taliban. And, as Mr. Obama put it, "if left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."
Actually, a recent study from the Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance documented that "nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance" in America. Whatever the exact number, nobody doubts that lack of health insurance causes thousands of Americans to die every year. If you're Fred Hiatt and you already have health insurance, it's easy to dismiss those deaths as unimportant, "not fundamental," not a "necessity" to tend to any time soon. No matter your views on Obama's health care reform plan, does it really take any effort to see how warped that dismissive mentality is?
But it becomes so much worse when one considers what we're ostensibly going to do in Afghanistan as part of our venerated "counter-insurgency" mission.....
So according to The Washington Post, dropping bombs on, controlling and occupying Afghanistan -- all while simultaneously ensuring "effective governance, economic development, education, the elimination of corruption, the protection of women's rights" to Afghan citizens in Afghanistan -- is an absolutely vital necessity that must be done no matter the cost. But providing basic services (such as health care) to American citizens, in the U.S., is a secondary priority at best, something totally unnecessary that should wait for a few years or a couple decades until we can afford it and until our various wars are finished, if that ever happens. "U.S. interests in South Asia" are paramount; U.S. interests in the welfare of those in American cities, suburbs and rural areas are an afterthought.
It's not just the Washington Post editorial board and the Village. What about all those "moderate" Democrats who are so afraid of being labeled big spenders for actually doing something so critically needed by their constituents, by the whole nation? When it's our tax dollars in the first place!?! Which of those Blue Dogs, those ConservaDems, ever raised their voice in opposition to pouring billions and billions of dollars into the sinkhole of war? Where were, where are, they and their penny-pinching ways on all of the waste fraud and abuse in KBR and Halliburton and Blackwater, the contractors who's actions in many instances actually endangered the lives of American troops?
It's an old fight, guns vs. butter. The fear of being perceived as "weak" on national security and "tax and spend liberals" is so ingrained in the elected Democrat's psyche that many of them probably don't even realize the trade-off they are making. But that doesn't mean it doesn't still stink to holy hell when Democrats, Democrats reject spending an extra few billion dollars to save untold American lives here at home.