Op-Ed: Job Killer Health Bill By-The-Numbers

Op-Ed

5.5 million--Number of jobs that could be lost as a result of taxes on businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance coverage, according to a model developed by President Obama's chief economic advisor Christina Romer

$729.5 billion--Total new taxes on small businesses, individuals who cannot afford health coverage, and employers who cannot afford to provide coverage that meet federal bureaucrats' standards

$1.055 trillion--New federal spending on expanded health insurance coverage over the next ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office preliminary score of the bill .

7%--Percentage of all that new spending occurring in the bill's first three years--representing a debt and tax "time bomb" in the program's later years set to explode on future generations

$88,200--Definition of "low-income" family of four for purposes of health insurance subsidies

114 million--Number of individuals who could lose their current coverage under the bill's government-run health plan, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group

43--Entitlement programs the bill creates, expands, or extends--an increase from H.R. 3200

111--Additional offices, bureaus, commissions, programs, and bureaucracies the bill creates over and above the entitlement expansions--more than double the number in H.R. 3200

3,425--Uses of the word "shall," representing new duties for bureaucrats and mandates on individuals, businesses, and States--also more than double the number in H.R. 3200

$10 billion--Minimum loss sustained by taxpayers every year due to Medicare fraud; the government-run health plan does not reform the ineffective anti-fraud statutes and procedures that have kept Medicare on the Government Accountability Office's list of high-risk programs for two decades

Zero--Prohibitions on government programs like Medicare and Medicaid from using cost-effectiveness research to impose delays to or denials for access to life-saving treatments

$634 Billion--Amount that could be saved by denying individuals access to treatments that are not "cost-effective," according to a report by the liberal Commonwealth Fund; Section 1160 of the bill gives bureaucrats in the Obama Administration virtual free rein to develop a new "high-value" reimbursement system for Medicare by May 2012

2017--Year Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted -- an entitlement crisis exacerbated by the bill, which according to the Congressional Budget Office will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care by $598 billion in its first ten years alone

$2,500--Promised savings for each American family from health reform, according to then-Senator Obama's campaign pledge--savings which the Administration's own actuaries have confirmed will not materialize, as the Pelosi health care bill would increase the growth of health care costs

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