Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to use sleight of hand and cries of urgency to perpetrate a fraud on the citizens of the United States of America, again.

Earlier in the month, in yet another free commercial for the President, also known as a Charlie Gibson interview, President Obama stated that if we didn’t pass the health care bill the federal government “will go bankrupt.”  It’s an emergency, we don’t have time to let the Senators read the bill!  Where have we heard this before?

In June Obama and Pelosi rushed through their cap and trade bill.  No congressman was given time to read the managers amendment (like with Harry Reid’s health care bill, it was the meat of the bill), before being forced to vote on it.

In February, Obama and Pelosi brought the stimulus bill to the floor for an emergency vote.  It had to be passed without anyone having time to read it, because it would ensure the unemployment rate wouldn’t reach double digits and it would prevent an economic collapse.  It’s ironic that it took roughly six months to dole out the first 10% of the ‘emergency’ stimulus bill, which contained roughly 5,000 earmarks — mostly in Democratic districts.  When pushing the ‘emergency nature’ of the stimulus bill, President Obama stated “if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits.”  Have you checked the unemployment rate lately, Mr. President?

Now, back to Reid and Obama’s health care bill.

Harry Reid is at best being disingenuous and at worse he is lying through his teeth.  He claims that this bill will reduce the deficit, but that is only because of sleight of hand.  The bill has ten years of tax increases (revenue), but only 6 years of costs.   It’s amazing that he can’t show an even bigger reduction in the deficit than $132 billion.  With four extra years of increased taxes and cuts to Medicare, before the spending begins, he can only show a reduction of $132 billion.  It’s scary to think about what the real cost would be if he didn’t apply his ten years of revenue and six years of cost trick (rumor has it Reid sought advice from Michael Mann and Phil Jones about how to manipulate data).

The Weekly Standard has published the numbers that Harry Reid doesn’t want you to see.  They have created an apples to apples cost breakdown, looking at the first ten years where both the tax increases and cost increases are in effect:

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that’s not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those “10-year costs” would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion — for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill’s full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion — according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion. They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill’s pledge to cut doctors’ payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up — which would reduce doctors’ enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How’s that for “reform”?

So, the bill does not cost $871 billion like Harry Reid claims, but $2.5 trillion, yes that is trillion with a “T”, in the first REAL ten years that the health care bill is in effect.

Now, some of the ‘cost savings’ they tout as ‘bending the cost curve’ is to cut Medicare payouts to doctors by 21%.  The Mayo Clinic, which President Obama referred to as ‘the model for health care reform’, has said that expanding Medicare will accelerate the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors.  Now, Reid proposes that in order to ‘bend the cost curve’ they will simply pay doctors and hospitals less:

Expanding this system to persons 55 to 64 years old would ultimately hurt patients by accelerating the financial ruin of hospitals and doctors across the country. A majority of Medicare providers currently suffer great financial loss under the program. Mayo Clinic alone lost $840 million last year under Medicare. As a result of these types of losses, a growing number of providers have begun to limit the number of Medicare patients in their practices.  Despite these provider losses, Medicare has not curbed overall spending, especially after adjusting for benefits covered and the cost shift from Medicare to private insurance.  This is clearly an unsustainable model, and one that would be disastrous for our nation’s hospitals, doctors and eventually our patients if expanded to even more beneficiaries.

The Price is Right!

Not only has Harry Reid deceived the American people about the true costs of his ‘health care reform’, but he has included what can only be called ‘payoffs’ or ‘bribes’ for the Senators that balked about voting for cloture.  Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was given $300 million of Medicaid subsidies, in order to secure her vote.  Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) both got tax exemptions (new tax on insurers) for Blue Cross and Mutual of Omaha located in Nebraska, but Reid also wrote into the bill that Nebraska would NEVER have to pay any increase in Medicaid costs.  The other 49 states will see a sharp increase in their Medicaid costs after the federal matching funds stop in 2017, but Nebraska will be subsidized forever by increasing the taxes on the other 49 states to cover Nelson’s payoff.  Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont threatened to vote against cloture, because the public option was pulled, so Reid threw Vermont additional Medicaid matching funds to buy Sanders’ cooperation.

Is there any wonder that Reid and Obama are pushing for votes in the middle of the night and to pass this bill during Christmas week, when most Americans are distracted  and with many conservative talk show hosts taking time off for Christmas.  President Obama and Harry Reid are counting on the fact that the bill will be passed before most people understand what it contains.

It’s time to rename our fine country the United States of Chicago, because Chicago-style politics have taken hold and are becoming the norm in Washington.