Health Care Cost Benefit Update

In yesterday's post, I asked for help with graphics showing why the Senate health care bill doesn't "appear" to be a budget buster. Dean obliged and rescued the blog with the following graphic from the Weekly Standard: (click to view larger image)

Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats claim that the cost of the Senate's health care bill is $849 billion over the first ten years. But, as Jeffrey Anderson pointed out in the New York Post on Friday, they get this figure by using "the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don't kick in until the fifth year of that "10-year" period. The true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid's advertising: $1.8 trillion."

Taxes now, benefits later. Maybe Peggy Noonan is right, and Obama better hope this bill doesn't pass, or he will definitely be a one term President with a Republican Congress for the second half of his term. No way will the public, seeing their employers or themselves saddled with a huge new tax burden without a benefit to show for it, accept this abomination. I predict massive Democrat losses in 2010 if health care "reform" passes in this form.