Alan Greenspan on the Cost of Health Care Reform

Recently Alan Greenspan said this on the Cost of Health Care Reform, "If we're wrong on the cost estimates the consequences are quite severe"!

Glenn Beck jokes, "severe likes a broken leg or severe like we're all going to die"?

This is a serious issue, we're to trust the CBO estimates on the cost of this Health care reform non-sense but when is the Government ever right about what a new program or project is going to cost? When do they ever get it right the first time?At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (This estimate allowed for inflation). This was a supposedly “conservative” estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion. Medicare Part A was estimated at NEVER going over $9 Billion dollars but it's actual current cost if almost $70 Billion. In 2007, total Medicare spending was over $400 billion.

How can we even consider the current estimates? What has our government done recently to make us trust their ability to accurately estimate the cost of anything as innocent as a toilet seat much less a program that by all accounts is somewhere in the $1 Trillion neighborhood. The thought that this figure will even be close is laughable. I guess at least we'll have an opportunity to see what severe consequences are in the mind of Alan Greenspan.

Cheers,

Mike