Cost And Effect

Over at HuffPo, Sam Stein argues that the CBO estimate on the cost of Obamacare shouldn't be treated as written in stone and that they've been wrong before:

Perhaps the biggest caution flag for treating CBO numbers as gospel -- and one of the more illuminating benchmarks from which to compare the current debate over health care costs -- is the Iraq War.

In October 2003, the CBO was asked to do a study about the costs of the Iraq War. According to varying scenarios of troop deployment the total price tag ranged from $85 billion to $200 billion over a ten-year period. A year later, the projected costs had risen further. Having already spent $123 billion, the CBO was now estimating that the prosecution of both Iraq and Afghanistan would total roughly $1.1 trillion over the subsequent ten years.

"In the scheme of things, the war is not super-expensive, but it also sure ain't cheap," said Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar and prominent war supporter.

By 2007, as the Iraq War had spiraled out of control, and with the surge of troops just beginning to take place, the price tag had jumped even more dramatically. The CBO was now projecting that the government would have to spend as much as $1.7 trillion over the next ten years on Iraq and Afghanistan. With interest, the number rose to $2.4 trillion -- $1.9 trillion of which was for Afghanistan alone.

Certainly, the costs of a war -- especially one as poorly managed as Iraq -- are far more difficult to predict than that for health care legislation. But, at the same time it is worth noting that the 2007 CBO projection for the ten-year cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are roughly double the prospective 10-year cost projections for health care reform. And yet, owing to the inverse political power in D.C. at the time, Republicans two years ago were scoffing at the congressional budget office's projections while Democrats were deeply concerned.

While it's a very good argument that Republicans just don't think spending money on fixing health care is as important as blowing things up, I think Stein's piece does a fair amount of damage to Obamacare as a whole. Pointing out that the CBO is liable to wildly underestimate the cost of things only adds height to the blockade that the Sensible Centrists are building to kill Obamacare.

You'd think these same centrists would be worried about the multiple polls saying Americans want real health care reform, and they want it now. Alas, lobbyists, not constituents, define the agenda in Washington.

[UPDATE 1:26 PM] And Democrats like Arkansas Blue Dog leader Mike Ross, deep in the pockets of big business, are the reason why we'll continue to have 50 million Americans with no health insurance and 10% yearly inflation in health care costs.

In the end, it will be Democrats that kill Obamacare, and Democrats who will pay the price for it in 2010.