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Memo to Snyder: Don’t stop the radical reforms now!Busted: Kathleen Sebelius admits double-counting of $500 billion in ObamaCare ‘savings’
March 6th, 2011 | 
Author: This has been obvious for some time by anyone who really looked at the numbers, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tries her best to evade the question. But Rep. Shimkus is relentless and finally gets her to admit it:
This is one of these matters that only Fox News and the expressly conservative media seem to care about, which I guess means the dinosaur media see it strictly as a partisan question. Seems to me that claiming $500 billion in savings that actually don’t exist ought to be a pretty big story, especially when you’re forced to admit it when put on the spot.
But it doesn’t fit with the storyline of a “historic legislative achievement” that “guarantees health care for all Americans.”
That’s a hell of a story all right! Too bad a story is all it is.
Posted in Dan Calabrese
28 Responses to “Busted: Kathleen Sebelius admits double-counting of $500 billion in ObamaCare ‘savings’”
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It is a little hard to get the thread of the dialogue since the Republican Congressman gives Ms. Sibelius so little time to respond and cuts her off, but she appears to be saying that reductions in the growth of the wasteful Medicare Advantage program cut the Medicare growth rate and thus extend the solvency of the fund. It is true that as an accounting matter under unified government accounting the full amount of trust fund savings cannot be counted towards the cost of funding healthreform. That is why the official CBO cost estimates for healthreform do no such thing. They don’t engage in any “double counting.” Even Representative Paul Ryan admits that:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/03/the_true_cost_of_the_health-ca.html
So the accusation about “double counting” goes to past Democratic political rhetoric, but has nothing to do with the official cost scoring of the healthcare reform law.
Perhaps if the Congressman had given Ms. Sibelius enough time to explain that would have come out in the testimony. But getting the soundbite for use in the echo chamber was too important for that.
I feel certain the waste you cite in the Medicare Advantage program will be nothing compared to the waste, bureaucracy and inefficiency (plus fraud and abuse) of Obamacare as a whole.
hey NYP:
have you ever asked yourself what if?
I think you might wanna ask yourself that.. I did!! if you still come up with the same answer then your lying to yourself..love your country before any political party.. Obamacare is fraud at its best.. very sad ..and i voted for the guy!! its too many things.. to many smoking guns!!! research
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