Can We Afford Obama's Health Plan?

President Obama is pushing for "health care reform" which could cost $1 Trillion, according to preliminary estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Just so that everyone is clear on this, that's 1,000,000,000,000 dollars. Spending a dollar per second, a trillion dollars will last you 31,688 years! $1 Trillion over 10 years works out to just over $3000 per second.

Knowing that there are roughly 300 million people in the United States, this will cost us $333 per person, per year, which may seem like a small amount to pay for health care, except the CBO also estimates that this plan would only reduce the number of uninsured people by about 16 million by 2015. So, in six years we will have spent about $600 billion to insure 16 million people. That works out to $37,500 per person, or $6250 per person, per year.



And remember, this is on top of what we already spend for health care. CBO data for Fiscal Year 2008 shows Medicare and Medicaid as the largest piece of the budget pie already (even more than the evil Defense Department).

And let's not forget the hidden costs associated with any new spending. Part of the funding will come from "cutting tax deductions for families that make over $250,000 a year." It's the same old plan: We need some more money, what should we do? I know! Let's make the rich people pay for it. They have lots of money they don't need. But those "rich people" are the small business owners who already have a hard time providing health care for their employees. Raising taxes on these people is only going to increase the number of uninsured americans.