Because President Obama has vowed he won’t sign a health bill that “adds a dime” to our federal deficit, House lawmakers acted as if their $210 billion in payments to doctors wouldn’t be part of overall health care reform. They pulled that spending provision out of the health care legislation, to make it look cheaper, and passed it without explaining how they’d pay for it.
That simply adds the additional Medicare spending to the deficit, which hit a record $1.4 trillion this year. But it also highlighted an important point: congressional leaders are trying to pull a fast one on spending.
The president vowed health reform would “bend the cost curve” and lawmakers likewise promised to hold the line on new spending. As we’ve seen, one way to at least appear to be doing so is by taking the $210 billion “doc fix” off the books. Another is by promising to slash some $500 billion in Medicare funding in the years ahead.
Having watched the House’s sleight-of-hand on the “doc fix,” does anyone believe lawmakers would actually make those deep cuts? It’s far more reasonable to believe we’ll get nationalized health care and still pay the full price for Medicare -- a double whammy that would drive the cost of the proposed reform far above $1 trillion and lead to a sea of red ink stretching to the horizon and beyond.
There’s a reason the spending portion in the health care bills the House has passed doesn’t take effect for years, while the taxes would begin almost immediately: Lawmakers are trying to fool us. They are trying to look fiscally responsible, when they are just the opposite.
We need to call them on it -- or we’ll all be paying a steep price for years to come.