In light of that fact, it’s worth noting how grim the basics are, even using CBO’s implausibly hopeful scenarios. The agency projects that the federal government will spend about $1.7 trillion, increase taxes by about a trillion dollars, and cut Medicare spending by more than $700 billion without any real structural reforms of the program (though it’s hard imagine that last one would actually happen in practice). It will create yet another unsustainable health-care entitlement program, expand the existing ones, micromanage the insurance industry in ways likely to make it even less efficient, employ even heavier price controls of the sort that have always failed in Medicare, and (especially through its taxes) stifle employment, investment, and medical research. And after all this, even the CBO’s very optimistic assumptions leave it concluding that 30 million Americans will be uninsured a decade from now—so we will have gone from today’s 80% coverage to 89% in 2023. If that’s what the Left means by universal coverage, there are far, far less costly and counterproductive ways to get there.
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