Robert Maguire's Library tagged costs →  View Popular

• The 2010 Pentagon budget means "every man, woman and child in the United States will spend more than $2,700 on (defense) programs and agencies next year," reports the Cato Institute. "By way of comparison, the average Japanese spends less than $330; the average German about $520; China's per capita spending is less than $100."
• "(The Pentagon budget) dwarfs the combined defense budgets of U.S. allies and potential U.S. enemies alike," reports Hearst Newspapers.
• "President (Obama) is on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any other president has in one term of office since World War II," reports National Journal's Government Executive magazine.
• In 2000, the Pentagon admitted it has lost -- yes, lost -- $2.3 trillion. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a subsequent Department of Defense study said it was only $1 trillion. To put such numbers in perspective, contemplate what those sums could finance. $1 trillion, for instance, could pay the total cost of universal healthcare for the long haul. $2.3 trillion would cover universal healthcare plus the bank bailout plus the stimulus package.

the Congressional Budget Office has consistently underestimated costs savings from a variety of institutional changes to Medicare.  For instance:




Medicare enacts the prospective payments system (PPS) for reimbursing inpatient hospital stays.



• The CBO projected total Medicare spending will rise to $60 billion in 1986.
• Actual Medicare spending in 1986 was only $48 billion.
• The CBO projected a 9.1% reduction in Medicare spending.
• The actual savings turned out to be 50 percent greater in 1998 and 113 percent greater in 1999 than the budget office forecast.
• The CBO projected that spending on the drug benefit would be $206 billion.
• Actual spending was nearly 40 percent less than that.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner made a prediction. The Republican health care plan, he said, "will cover millions more Americans" than the Democrats' plan. Bold. But here's what the experts say:

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share.

I thought its proposals were ill thought-through and that it would
have been better to take the time to develop something more coherent,
rather than making things up on the fly, which appears to be the case.

I also believe the administration has done a poor job of addressing
what I think is the biggest problem with the American health care
system: It costs too much for what we get. We spend in total twice as
much of our gross domestic product on health as most other major
countries without getting much in return for the extra spending.

Finally, I think the goal of universal coverage is a good one, but
the Obama proposal is not properly financed. I think a broad-based new
government benefit should be financed with a broad-based tax that is to
a large extent paid by the beneficiaries, as is the case with Social
Security.