When Obamcare was passed in March of 2010, one of the key objectives that had to be met from a political standpoint was showing that its costs over the coming 10 years would be under $1 trillion dollars. This somewhat arbitrary number was picked to say that Obamacare would cost less than what we had spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this may have made for good political theatre but what it really had to so with healthcare and health insurance in practical terms always kind of eluded me.
One of the ways that the democrat party made the numbers work (and I'm just stating historical facts here, no Republicans ever voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act) was that they transferred $700 billion in what would have been increased spending on Medicare over that 10 year period to fund ObamaCare. We will still be spending more on Medicare in the coming decade but the amount of available funding has certainly been sharply deflected downwards at a time when a record number of Americans will be in and entering the Medicare program. So, in this way, ObamaCare has shifted funds that would have otherwise gone towards Medicare to help paint a budget picture that allowed for the passage of the law. Of course, since then government estimates for the projected 10 year cost of Obamacare has gone far above the $1 trillion mark but, hey, they got the law passed and they didn't even really have to read it.
While most government officials will claim Obamacare takes nothing from Medicare or senior health benefits, when the last was passed, the Obama administration arbitrarily claimed costs during the first 10 years would be less than $1 trillion dollars. One of the ways that the CBO came to this estimate was planned cuts of $700 billion in Medicare pending during that same 10-year period, despite the fact that Medicare will have more members than ever. Whether CMS can possibly provide coverage for more seniors while saving $700 billion remains to be seen, but the reality of the situation is those savings seem highly unlikely, if not utterly impossible.
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One of the ways that the democrat party made the numbers work (and I'm just stating historical facts here, no Republicans ever voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act) was that they transferred $700 billion in what would have been increased spending on Medicare over that 10 year period to fund ObamaCare. We will still be spending more on Medicare in the coming decade but the amount of available funding has certainly been sharply deflected downwards at a time when a record number of Americans will be in and entering the Medicare program. So, in this way, ObamaCare has shifted funds that would have otherwise gone towards Medicare to help paint a budget picture that allowed for the passage of the law. Of course, since then government estimates for the projected 10 year cost of Obamacare has gone far above the $1 trillion mark but, hey, they got the law passed and they didn't even really have to read it.