Tuesday, July 08, 2014

Thus always with entitlements

As I've written many times before, the political pressures of entitlement spending always lean towards reducing revenue-raising steps (taxes) and increasing benefits.  It is inevitable.  Weekly Standard: "An unfolding fiscal disaster - The calamitous finances of Obamacare."
No sooner was the ink dry on the ACA than the law’s various “pay-fors” began to be tossed overboard, one after the other.
....
Roughly $100 billion of financing in that first decade was also to come from penalties on individuals (for failing to carry health insurance) and employers (for failing to offer it). But the Obama administration has repeatedly postponed enforcement. Unsurprisingly, there is now a campaign to abandon the individual mandate penalty altogether, despite advocates having previously touted it as essential to the workings of the ACA. The administration has also been dropping cuts to Medicare Advantage required under the ACA, with the costs of these decisions still unknown.
It was always laughable to think that Obamacare would be deficit-neutral and the CBO, sensing the slight of hand in play, now says it's unable to make realistic cost projections.  This will end like every other entitlement, adding trillions to the national debt.

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