United Liberty

We are told that ObamaCare will bring down costs and reduce the budget deficit and all these other wonderful things. Supporters of the bill need only look to Massachusetts to see how wrong they are in those claims.

Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill, a Democrat turned independent, says the health care reform law that passed in his state in 2006 is breaking the budget. He also took some shots at health care “reform” efforts on the national level, which are very similar to the Massachusetts plan:

“If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.

Echoing criticism leveled by congressional Republicans in recent weeks, Cahill said, “It is time for the president, the Democratic leadership, to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan that does not threaten to bankrupt this country.”
[…]
Cahill said the law is being sustained only with the help of federal aid, which he suggested that the Obama administration is funneling to Massachusetts to help the president make the case for a similar plan in Congress.

“The real problem is the sucking sound of money that has been going in to pay for this health care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that we’re being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through” Congress.

For those who went to public school, did you ever wonder what that 13 years of education cost the people who were shelling the dough? (By that I mean your parents, your neighbors, and anyone paying taxes.) For those who didn’t go to public school, this still applies to you. Because you subsidized my education. Thanks! (Suckers…)

Anyway, this so-called free schooling actually did cost something. But how much? Well it turns out it probably cost more than the administrators were letting on. My Cato colleague Adam Schaeffer, an education policy expert, examined some of the largest school districts and found that they have been underreporting the actual costs.

And as the title of his new study (“They Spend WHAT?”) lets on, we’re not just talking a few nickels and dimes on pencil expenses. This is some serious taxpayer cash. Before I let him explain it all in the video below, here’s the money quote:

It is impossible to have a public debate about education policy if public schools can’t be straight forward about their spending.

Exactly. Watch:

Mitt Romney is still parading the health care reform bill passed in Massachusetts when he was Governor as “the ultimate conservative plan”:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney insisted on Sunday that the health care reform plan he implemented in Massachusetts had no similarity to the one President Obama is championing, in part because Romney’s was state-based and Obama’s is a national overhaul.
[…]
Romney refused to acknowledge that his plan was similar to Obama’s. Though, as host Chris Wallace point out, on many key measures — an individual and employer mandate, subsidies for those who would have trouble buying insurance, and minimum standards for coverage — the two plans converged. The likely 2012 presidential candidate pointed out that the president’s plan included cuts to Medicare and additional taxes. But both of those measures are designed, in part, to provide funds to keep per capita spending down — something that the Massachusetts plan failed to do. Finally, Romney touted the fact that his plan included “no controls over insurance premiums, price controls,” which provides some explanation for why premiums in the Bay State are the highest in the nation.

Andy Roth from the Club for Growth disputes this notion:

The individual mandate is diametrically against what free-market conservatives believe in than I think he is in the wrong party.

Passing ObamaCare through reconciliation may not be as easy as it sounds. If you caught our podcast with Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, you’ll recall that he said that some House Democrats may be reluctant to vote for health care reform due to disagree over certain tax provisions and abortion language, based on a promise that a fix will be pushed through the Senate via reconcilition.

Cannon said:

So the problem though that the Democratic leadership is facing is that there is a lot that can go wrong in that reconciliation process. For example, you’re not supposed to able to make policy changes through the reconciliation process like the changes to the abortion language in the Senate bill that pro-life that pro-life House Democrats would like to see and so anything that goes wrong in the reconciliation process will scuttle those changes those changes that House Democrats want to see. Any changes that the leadership is promising House Democrats is that after the send the health care bill to the president to become law the House will pass the reconciliation package, the Senate will pass the identical passage and therefore all the House Democrats’ concerns will be met. But if Senate Democrats renege on that commitment then the House Democrats don’t get the changes they want. And why should the Senate Democrats follow through, the bill that they want to become law is already law.