From The New York Times:

“The Congressional Budget Office said the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years. The costs include $345 billion for the expansion of Medicaid and $461 billion for subsidies to help lower-income people buy insurance.

The budget office said the costs would be completely offset by new fees and taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so federal budget deficits in the next 10 years would be $81 billion lower than now projected.”

My Comment:

Again, this adds more detail to my continual drum-beat on this blog that insurance is the heart of the problem. From AIG, to the reinsurance industry, to the WTC attacks, to health insurance, to securities risk insurance, to the new “impact-of-financial-crises-on-poor-people-in-the-third-world- insurance ” (bet you hadn’t heard of that one, but it’s in the works) that pretends to help people by taking the risk out of life.

That’s like drugging yourself to take the pain out of burning, and then cozying up next to a fire. It’s no more than cushioning the downside of bad economic or personal behavior. Which inevitably means – surprise – more bad economic or personal behavior. And then finally when the majority turn into bad actors, even the good actors have to go bad to keep up…..

We don’t need more government intervention in insurance. We need less of it. We need small, voluntary insurance pools. Pared down. Local. Community-based and private. As many and as various as possible, competing against each other. With strict safe-guards to prevent them becoming a racket for lobbyists, drug companies, doctors, and lawyers. Take away the cookie-jar and you’ll get rid of the sticky fingers.