If I had some ham, I could have a ham sandwich, if I had some bread

The current thinking on the "deficit neutral" health care bill is: if we raise taxes and cut spending elsewhere, we can have national health care, but we won't cut spending elsewhere. That leaves taxes.

Senator Charles Grassley explains:

"The huge, untold story of this CBO report is that for the 85 percent of the people that have health insurance, their premiums will still go up because there will be a new tax on insurance policies," says Grassley. "People may say, 'What’s wrong with taxing insurance companies?' but remember, corporations don't pay taxes, people pay taxes. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation says that these premiums will be passed on."

"Even though the CBO says the bill will cost $829 billion, a lot of its savings come from Medicare, which I don’t think is right," says Grassley. "We could also end up spending all of this money only to see taxes increase, and premiums increase, and still have 25 million people uninsured."

Here's more from Critical Condition:

Those numbers are phony for any number of reasons, but notice that the "deficit reduction" is the net result of $518 billion in increased spending from expanded insurance coverage, $404 billion in reduced spending from "other provisions affecting direct spending," and $196 billion in increased revenues. The $404 billion "does not include effects on spending subject to future appropriations." So: Will Congress actually cut Medicare reimbursements (by over 20 percent), unlike previous years? More fundamentally: The increase in revenues ($196 billion) is over twice the net reduction in the deficit. So put aside all the other problems with the numbers: None of this net "deficit reduction" results from spending efficiencies. It is all tax increases and more.

There is no chance that Congress will cut Medicare spending by $400 billion – none. I won't even qualify it with a "virtually" to give the indication there's a possibility. It won't happen. So that leaves government health care spending propped up by new taxes funneled through insurance companies the same way tobacco companies passed on new levies to smokers. Except now the "sin tax" is living.

Extra - From Wizbang: "Baucus plan gets clean CBO scorecard by raising taxes"

More - Megan explains why we should fear the Massachusetts model.