Friday, March 19, 2010

Washington Post Op-Ed on Health Care’s Budgetary Gimmicks

I wanted to highlight this op-ed by the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus – a supporter of the President’s health “reform” effort – criticizing the various budgetary gimmicks in the health care bills included in the CBO’s cost estimates, and saying “I wouldn’t bank – or base my vote – on [the CBO score].”  The piece also argues that Speaker Pelosi’s boasts about the bills’ deficit savings are “premature at best, delusional at worst.”
The general thrust of this op-ed synchs closely with a news piece also in the Post, which highlights the significant areas of uncertainty surrounding the CBO analysis, given the number of highly complex and inter-related assumptions woven into the Congressional Budget Office analysis.