House Speaker John Boehner, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, argued that ObamaCare "adds a massive, expensive, unworkable government program... View Enlarged Image
House Speaker John Boehner is right that ObamaCare has to be part of any fiscal cliff talks.
If it's not, it will be proof that Democrats aren't serious about tackling the country's long-term deficit crisis.
In an op-ed this week for his hometown newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Boehner argued that ObamaCare "adds a massive, expensive, unworkable government program at a time when our national debt already exceeds the size of our country's entire economy."
He's got that right, too.
When they put ObamaCare together, Democrats tried to hide its true cost by delaying its start date and deploying various accounting tricks — such as double-counting Medicare savings.
But the fact is ObamaCare offers lawmakers a huge pot of potential spending cuts.
Over the next 10 years, ObamaCare will add a stunning $1.7 trillion to the federal budget.
By 2022, its annual costs will be $256 billion, and rising at a fast 6% clip.
A recent Congressional Budget Office report notes that simply scrapping ObamaCare's "insurance exchange" subsidies would knock $150 billion off the federal tab in 2020. That's far more savings than any other single cost-cutting idea being floated by budget hawks these days.
And since none of these subsidies is in effect now, no one would miss them.
Plus, if the history of federal health programs is any guide, those are decidedly low-ball estimates.
As IBD reported recently, Medicare cost 50% more in its first year than the government had expected, and lawmakers have struggled since to keep its spending in line. The same holds true for Medicaid, which is swamping state budgets.
It's highly unlikely that Democrats will concede to eliminating ObamaCare subsidies, and the White House has already made noises that ObamaCare is off-limits in the budget talks.
Still, even Democrats ought to see the merit in paring these subsidies back.
As it stands, they will extend to families making as much as $90,000 a year — or four times the poverty rate.
With deficits running $1 trillion a year, is that really something the government ought to be taking on?
There's also plenty of other fat stuffed into ObamaCare that should be on the table in any deficit-cutting talks.
The liberal Talking Points Memo site, for example, notes that ObamaCare includes a Prevention and Public Health Fund that will waste more than $6 billion.
There's also the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, into which ObamaCare will shovel $10 billion.
"Democrats aren't ruling out the prospect of cuts to parts of the law," the TPM story says, "as long as they don't weaken its overarching goals."
Our preference would be to chuck the law entirely. Even if the government weren't facing an immediate debt crisis, ObamaCare wouldn't be worth it.
As we've pointed out many times, all the law will do is drive up health spending, fuel an insurance cost spiral, slow economic growth, wreck the doctor-patient relationship, force millions off their employer-provided health plans, and require millions more to buy coverage they don't want.
Even before it's fully implemented, ObamaCare is already driving up insurance premiums and pushing companies to cut worker hours.
And, despite its fantastically large price tag, ObamaCare will still leave 30 million uninsured.
A true health care fix won't come by embedding Washington more deeply into the health care system, but by getting the federal government out of the way, so free market competition on price and quality can work its magic.
But with Obama now safely in the White House for four more years, the chance for repeal is now exceedingly remote.
Nevertheless, if lawmakers are serious about deficit-reduction, they must at the very least cut out all expensive goodies tucked into ObamaCare's nooks and crannies.