When the U.S. House of Representatives last weekend passed the atrocious ObamaCare medical bill, it threatened us all with a trillion dollars of spending – or more.
We won’t know all of the details and all of the bad effects for several years – maybe not until President Barack Obama is (we hope) out of office.
Even after he is gone, the very bad effects will linger on.
But although great damage has been assured by passage of ObamaCare, by very narrow margins, we need to pay attention to what Tennessee’s very thoughtful and responsible U.S. Sen. Bob Corker said in opposing it.
Sen. Corker, of Chattanooga, said the bad ObamaCare bill “will hit our state and future generations very hard.”
Sen. Corker said Tennessee’s Gov. Phil Bredesen (incidentally, a Democrat) “let me know this bill will cost Tennessee an estimated $1.1 billion in Medicaid expansion over five years – a huge unfunded mandate that creates a very difficult situation for our state.
“Beyond that, I think what bothers me most about the bill are its disingenuous accounting mechanisms. It’s insulting to the American people.
“First, the bill applies 10 years of new taxes to finance six years of spending, resulting in huge deficits over the next decades.
“Second, even President Obama’s own Medicare officials have determined that Medicare savings are counted TWICE in the bill, hiding the legislation’s true cost. That comes down to elementary school logic; you can’t spend the same dollar twice.
“And finally, almost as soon as the ink dries on this legislation, a new bill will come forth to deal with all or part of what is called the ‘doc fix’ to ensure that physicians who treat Medicare recipients do not receive a 21 percent cut. The cost of that over 10 years is more than $200 billion, proving that Americans have not been dealt with squarely on the true accounting associated with the bill.”
The bill unfortunately has passed and has become law. But the huge costs and other defects will hit Tennesseans and other Americans for many years to come.
We should appreciate the fact that Sen. Corker and his Tennessee colleague, Sen. Lamar Alexander, did all they could to avoid the far-reaching damage that is surely coming.