Sunday, November 17, 2013

Why Make Health Reform Deficit Neutral?

Why Make Health Reform Deficit Neutral?



When the terrorist attacks of 9 / 11 hit the United States and then suddenly we were plunged into bloodshed, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, I don’t summon up anyone demanding that the wars be “deficit neutral. ” No one talked about whether we could ration them. They were things we just had to do.
When George W. Hodgepodge proposed giving vast sums to comfortable people in the construction of tax cuts, no one argued that it would be “deficit neutral. ” Quite, it was argued that cutting taxes wouldn’t bring in less tax revenue at all, it would bring us more tax revenue thanks to the economy would fill out so much faster. And besides, it was somehow excessively urgent, something we just had to do.
When the banks tottered and needed to be shored up with taxpayer money to the tune of partly $1 trillion, there was no way to altercate this would be “deficit neutral. ” We might get the money back, we might not. Whether we could implement it was not the matter, we just had to do it to save the banking system. Similarly, the “Stimulus Bill” was unusually urgent, and something we just had to do, whether we could bring it or not.
Then we come to health care reform, and suddenly, it seems, this is where we draw the line. The president says that health care reform must be “deficit neutral. ” It can’t actually cost us mechanism in tax funds. And everyone nods sagely and argues over how to do this.
Why is this the one thing that we can only do if we can demonstrate ahead of time that it will not actually cost substance? Our current system costs us an estimated 44, 000 lives and impoverishes millions of Americans every year, and causes unidentified suffering. Why is this the one huge national complication that everyone agrees we can’t favor to solve?

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