The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that three million more people than first projected will either remain, or become, uninsured under the Affordable Care Act when it goes into effect in 2014. Since mainly red states have signalled they will reject federal expansion of Medicaid in their locales, the government will save a bundle of money and the deficit will be reduced. Out of 50 million currently uninsured people, less than two-thirds will now benefit from Obamacare. And since employers are dropping expensive coverage, and people are still losing jobs, look for that number to keep dwindling. The CBO forecasts an additional 4,000 people, or 7,000 additional people will be uncovered by the end of the decade.
And the Democratic Senate Majority Leader is calling this a good thing? Well, yeah, because now Obama can brag about his austerity cred when Republicans call him a tax-and-spend socialist. The hell with sick and dying people when the Oval Office tenancy is at stake. From the AP report:
Thirty million uninsured people will be covered by 2022, or about 3 million fewer than projected this spring before the court ruling, the (CBO) report said.
As a result, taxpayers will save about $84 billion from 2012 to 2022. That brings the total cost of expanding coverage down to $1.2 trillion, from about $1.3 trillion in the previous estimate.
Democrats immediately hailed the findings as vindication for the president. “This confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the Affordable Care Act saves lots of money,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Not one sympathetic word, though, about the new three million, on top of the 20 million already thrown under the bus by the ACA. Reid was mum on the actual victims of this fantastic pennysaver, most of whom unfortunately reside in bastions governed by the GOP (Greedy Obdurate Plutocrats.) This is just more evidence that the Democrats, too, are full-bore austerians, just slightly more discreet than their GOP brethren on the other side of the corrupt duopoly.
Of course, reducing the number of people on Medicaid may eventually steer them into federal exchanges and profiteering private insurance, essentially increasing the final per-person costs to the government. But nobody's talking about that faraway eventuality, because it won't dawn on us until after the election. All anybody's talking about is how Obama has gotten more ammunition to hit back hard against Romney. Score one for the blue team in the Battle of the Deficit Hawks. Great refereeing, too, by the Supreme Court with their new Medicaid opt-out call.
Twenty-seven million abandoned souls, and counting. Three people still dying every single hour for lack of medical care.
It would be pathetic, if it weren't such an egregious case of political malpractice, bordering on felonious assault.
How's this for irony: although the almighty deficit is running lower this year through a combination of government austerity and modest increases in tax revenue, the gains are being offset by a one percent increase in federal spending. And guess where that one percent increase is going? Toward the continuing bailout of the big banks! Even as Congress cuts programs for the poor, even as cities go bankrupt and schools shut down, even as chronic unemployment is creating a permanent underclass of tens of millions of people, the bankster class is still getting theirs.
The latest report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says federal spending on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) grew by $62 billion through June -- offsetting most of this year's corporate, individual and payroll tax revenue growth. (Contrary to popular belief, the banks have not paid back all the money "lent" to them by taxpayers. ProPublica has the facts and figures, and Zero Hedge further debunks the myth that Main Street made some kind of profit from TARP.)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that as the rich get richer, the poor get screwed. Republicans can scream all they want that the Democrats are spending us into a national suicide, and Democrats can promise till the cows come home that if only we all share the sacrifice and the wealthy pay "just a little more" everything will be hunky-dory in about a century.
Meanwhile, the banksters get their $62 billion welfare check in the form of forgiveness for their late TARP payments, and put it toward their bonuses and salaries and perks and bribes to their political friends in Washington and all 50 states. Congress does its part by cutting $28 billion from Medicaid and saving another $20 billion through ending benefits for the long-term unemployed. The one percent increase in spending this year is being squandered on a subset of the one percent at the very tippy top of the pile. Imagine that.
It's not that we weren't warned. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano spoke about the looming threat of domestic terrorism years ago. She just forgot to mention that the terrorists are elite corporate psychopaths and their political minions.
