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Posts Tagged ‘spending’
August 12th, 2022 at 11:54 am
Image of the Day: IRS Collected Record Taxes Through July
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Our latest Liberty Update highlights the danger of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that’s about to enjoy a doubling of funding and personnel via the abominable Manchin-Schumer “compromise” tax-and-spend-and-regulate bill.  Apologists for the bill rationalize that a turbocharged IRS is necessary to collect more taxes from the American people (and we highlight in our piece how Americans earning under $200,000, not the “rich,” will be the primary targets).  The U.S. Treasury Department, however, just reported that the federal government just collected a record amount of taxes so far this fiscal year.  The obvious problem isn’t insufficient funding of the federal government, but rather excessive spending:

 

November 15th, 2021 at 9:23 am
Voters’ Message: Biden “Build Back Better” Blowout Is a Loser
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In the wake of this month’s catastrophic election results for Joe Biden and his party, many leftists stubbornly rationalized that voters were upset that Biden hadn’t seen more of his agenda passed, and that the answer to Biden’s and Democrats’ ills was to step on the gas and pass more of that agenda.  Well, the new ABC News/Washington Post poll offers and instant rebuttal.  The survey is nothing short of catastrophic for Biden and Democrats as 2022 approaches, with Republicans scoring record preferences (see image below).  But note something else:  This poll was conducted November 7 – 10, AFTER Biden’s “infrastructure” spending bill was passed.

 

“Build Back Better” Is a Loser

 

We at CFIF have detailed the catastrophic potential effects of passing Biden’s even larger spending bill currently before Congress, including its potentially devastating consequences for American healthcare and pharmaceutical innovation:

 

Specifically, they’re attempting to cement agreement on provisions that would empower the federal government to begin “negotiating” drug prices with manufacturers and imposing draconian penalties upon providers that don’t play ball.

That constitutes a scheme to bring price controls to American healthcare, with catastrophic effects, according to analyses from both the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as well as the University of Chicago.”

 

This new ABC News/Washington Post poll should offer a cautionary tale for Senators Joe Manchin (D – West Virginia), Kirsten Sinema (D – Arizona) or anyone else even contemplating voting for it.

April 19th, 2021 at 10:52 am
Image of the Day: Biden Wants U.S. to Suffer World’s Highest Corporate Tax Rate
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In our latest Liberty Update, we highlight how even some elements of the Biden Administration’s wasteful spending blowout that actually do constitute “infrastructure” are nevertheless terrible ideas — his broadband plan chief among them.  Along the way, we note in passing how part of Biden’s plan includes returning the U.S. to the inglorious status of imposing the developed world’s highest and least-competitive corporate tax, which the Tax Foundation illustrates nicely:

 

Biden Plan Imposes World's Highest Tax Rate Upon U.S.

Biden Plan Imposes World’s Highest Tax Rate Upon U.S.

 

February 16th, 2021 at 1:37 pm
Image of the Day: Don’t Believe the “Blue State Tax Bailout” Advocates
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From our friend Dan Clifton, a nifty visual rebuke to leftists and Biden Administration officials pleading impoverishment and demanding a federal bailout of “blue” states.  Incoming tax revenues are actually up at the state and local level, and high-tax blue states would be better off engaging in tax reform and reduction for their own citizens instead of asking taxpayers in other states to bail them out:

No Blue State Tax Bailout Needed

No Blue State Tax Bailout Needed

November 15th, 2019 at 11:57 am
Congress Moves to Exacerbate the Unjustifiable Electric Vehicle Subsidy Monstrosity
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We at CFIF have repeatedly highlighted how the electric vehicle (EV) subsidy complex captures the American public’s most hated elements of bureaucracy:  crony capitalism, wasteful spending, inefficient incentives and government picking winners and losers.

Whatever novelty that EVs may offer, taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be subsidizing them, and bureaucrats shouldn’t be unjustifiably foisting them upon a perfectly healthy automobile marketplace.

Unfortunately, as Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) notes, the EV Industrial Subsidy Complex is now demanding even more:

Although wind and solar advocates continue to assure us that wind and solar are now cheaper than conventional power, the wind and solar lobbies don’t agree.  They are back at the trough.  And the automakers, led by GM and Tesla, are pushing to lift the limit on electric vehicle subsidies from 200,000 EVs per manufacturer to 600,000.”

Preposterously, Congressman Dan Kildee (D – Michigan), who has sponsored legislation to do just that – triple the number of subsidized vehicles allowed – defended that idea by claiming, “The whole notion is that over time, it’s going to take less to incentivize.”

Pardon?

The scheme has already had plenty of time, yet apparently it’s going to take even more to incentivize, not less.

As CFIF emphasized, the entire EV subsidy idea from over a decade ago during the Bush Administration was based upon the idea that the EV industry merely needed a temporary, limited push to create momentum that would become self-sustaining:

[T]he EV subsidy boondoggle was originally justified as a temporary, limited incentive to kickstart the fledgling EV industry.  In 2008, before the American fracking revolution subsequently eased our concerns about the overreliance on foreign oil, the Pelosi-Schumer Congress created a $7,500 tax credit for purchasers of EVs.  Senator Orin Hatch (R – Utah) at the time emphasized the subsidy’s limited scope and duration:

I want to emphasize that, like the tax credits available under current law for hybrid electric vehicles, the tax incentives in the Freedom Act are temporary.  They are needed in order to help get these products over the initial stage of production, when they are quite a bit more expensive than older technology vehicles, to the mass production stage, where economies of scale will drive costs down, and the credits will no longer be necessary.

Well, over a decade later we’re well past the ‘initial stage of production,’ yet they remain ‘more expensive’ and continue to receive taxpayer subsidies.”

We were promised over a decade ago that EV subsidies were temporary and limited.  Today, with greater energy independence achieved due to the fracking revolution and with EVs widely available for any consumers willing to purchase them with their own dollars, there’s simply no reason that the subsidy should be allowed to continue.

Let alone to be tripled.

April 17th, 2017 at 1:37 pm
Image of the Day: How Your Federal Tax Dollars Are Now Spent
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Today’s image of the day, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, how $100 of your federal taxes are now allocated by the government:

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Federal Spending Allocation

Federal Spending Allocation

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For perspective (see image below), that means that military spending has declined an alarming 22.3% since just 2011.  In contrast, since 2011 Social Security spending is up 17%, Medicare is up 15.1%, Medicaid is up 25.4%, civilian federal retirement is up 11.3%, education is up 5.3% and interest payments are up 1.8%.  Something to consider as important budget and spending battles heat up…

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2011 Comparison

2011 Comparison

February 28th, 2017 at 1:51 pm
Image of the Day: Education Spending Has Skyrocketed, Educational Performance Has Stagnated
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Courtesy of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), educational spending has actually skyrocketed over recent decades, yet educational performance has stagnated:

Education Spending Up, Performance Stagnant

Education Spending Up, Performance Stagnant

Something to forward whenever someone claims that education spending has somehow been starved, or that insufficient funding is the source of our problems.

November 14th, 2016 at 11:38 am
NY Times’s Paul Krugman Discredited In Record Time
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There may be no commentator more exposed and discredited in recent years than The New York Times’s Paul Krugman.

Where to even begin?  My personal favorite might be his call for a massive spending “stimulus” when Obama entered office, which he estimated should be approximately $600 billion, to return economic health to the nation.  “When I put this all together,” he said, “I conclude that the stimulus package should be at least 4% of GDP, or $600 billion.”  Obama ended up getting something much larger, closer to $1 trillion.  Yet when the U.S. proceeded to suffer the worst decade of economic performance in U.S. history and multiple failed “recovery summers,” Krugman just shamelessly published a later piece entitled “How Did We Know the Stimulus Was Too Small?”

Fast forward to election night, when he moped and went on record predicting that markets would never recover from Donald Trump’s victory.  You can’t make this stuff up:

It really does now look like President Donald Trump, and markets are plunging.  When might we expect them to recover?

Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty.  The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.  Still, I guess people want an answer:  If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

So what happened immediately after Krugman’s solemn prediction?  Well, markets reached another record high on Friday.

Perhaps Krugman simply recognizes the wreckage of Obama’s legacy, and masochistically seeks to outdo him?

December 4th, 2015 at 9:44 am
ObamaCare Meltdown, Cont’d: Health Spending Rises Most Since 2007
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When even The New York Times issues lamentations as the consequences of ObamaCare become more clear, it’s obvious that things aren’t going well:

Health spending grew faster than the economy in 2014, and the federal share of health spending grew even faster, as major provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect.  Total spending on health care increased 5.3 percent last year, the biggest jump since 2007, and accounted for 17.5 percent of the nation’s economic output, up from 17.3 percent in 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services said in its annual report on spending trends.”

But not to worry.  The Obama Administration assures us that things are fine:

The spending report comes as the Obama administration is already on the defensive over rising premiums and deductibles on insurance policies sold through the health law’s exchanges.  Last month, United Health Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, significantly lowered its profit estimates and blamed the federal health care law.  Obama Administration officials said Wednesday that the rise in health spending last year did not undermine their conviction that the Affordable Care Act had been a boon for the nation.”

Of course, this is the same administration that assured us just hours before the Paris terrorist attacks that ISIS is contained, not to mention that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.”  Per Nancy Pelosi’s claim, we’re finding out what’s in ObamaCare, and the only question is whether this or the Iran nuclear accord – which we’re now told Iran didn’t even sign – will prove the worse of Obama’s two signature “achievements” as time progresses.

July 31st, 2015 at 10:01 am
Sticker Shock: Healthcare Spending Spikes As ObamaCare Takes Effect
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For some time now, Barack Obama and his apologists have trumpeted slowing healthcare costs as somehow attributable to ObamaCare.  Never mind that the declines predated Obama’s election, and that even The Washington Post gave him three Pinocchios in its Fact Checker analysis of this claim on November 5 of last year:

Healthcare inflation has gone down every single year since the law [ObamaCare] passed, so that we now have the lowest increase in healthcare costs in 50 years – which is saving us about $180 billion in reduced overall costs to the federal government and in the Medicare program.”

To illustrate how he played the role of rooster taking credit for the sunrise, healthcare cost inflation reached 7% in 2003, but plummeted to approximately 2% before Obama even took office.

Regardless, but healthcare costs are spiking again as ObamaCare actually takes effect:

Growth in national health spending, which had dropped to historic lows in recent years, has snapped back and is set to continue at a faster pace over the next decade, federal actuaries said Tuesday…  The jump comes after five consecutive years of average spending growth of less than 4% annually – a rate touted by the Obama Administration as the lowest since the government began tracking health spending in the 1960s and a sign that the health law’s Medicare provisions were helping rein in health costs.”

Ooops.

Chalk up yet another failure of ObamaCare, which helps explain why it remains so unpopular among Americans as we “find out what’s in it” in the words of Nancy Pelosi.

May 4th, 2015 at 7:59 pm
ObamaCare Exchanges Are Losing Money

The reason 35 states chose not to build a local ObamaCare exchange – even though the federal government made billions of dollars available to do so – is pretty simple: After an initial burst of funding the a state must foot the bill to maintain it.

That’s turning out to be a very costly proposition.

Consider Oregon.

“The case of Oregon is the most extreme,” explains an editorial in the Washington Examiner. “After spending $200 million to develop its own health insurance exchange, the Beaver State was forced to abandon it altogether because of pervasive and intractable technical problems.”

It gets worse.

“Tiny Vermont spent roughly $4,000 for every uninsured Vermonter to develop its exchange – more than enough to buy a pre-ObamaCare policy for everyone for an entire year,” says the editorial. “And yet after spending so much, the Green Mountain State may soon follow Oregon’s lead in abandoning its creation. Minnesota faces a similar situation.”

Recall that ObamaCare’s upfront establishment grant money was designed to make it seem like the controversial health law didn’t add to the federal deficit by enticing states to take on the legacy costs of operating the exchanges. With Healthcare.gov becoming the de facto nationwide ObamaCare exchange, that gamble has backfired, but not before wasting lots of taxpayer money.

March 19th, 2015 at 6:11 pm
AEI Scholar: House GOP Budget Needs Work

James Pethokoukis of AEI argues that the new House GOP budget puts too much emphasis on cutting the deficit and not enough on increasing economic growth.

“Indeed, the entire thrust of the budget seems to be that the federal debt is America’s biggest problem,” he writes. “But where’s the evidence? Low interest rates are hardly signaling investor alarm. And not only is the federal debt issued in U.S. dollars, our currency is the world’s reserve. The U.S. is not Greece. The big economic danger here isn’t a debt-driven financial crisis. It’s chronic slow growth from having to sharply raise taxes if we don’t restructure entitlements in a way that promotes saving and work.”

Of course, House budget writers do intend to reform entitlement spending drivers like Medicare and Medicaid – and eventually, one hopes, Social Security. So from at least this standpoint Pethokoukis and the House Budget Committee seem to be in agreement that structural fixes are needed to get entitlement spending on a sustainable trajectory.

What seems to divide them, however, is the motivation for doing so. For the budget drafters it may be containing and reducing an exploding deficit. For Pethokoukis and others, it’s kick-starting the economy to generate more wealth up-and-down the income ladder.

One of these two motivations will ultimately decide what conservative entitlement reform looks like. It will be interesting to see which prevails in the run-up to 2016.

March 17th, 2015 at 1:40 pm
New House Budget Solidifies Ryan’s Legacy

New House Budget Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) is picking up right where his predecessor Paul Ryan (R-WI) left off.

Today, Price introduced his first federal budget proposal which borrows heavily from Ryan’s plans, “including a plan that would transform Medicare into a voucher-like ‘premium support’ program for seniors joining Medicare in 2024 or later,” reports Fox News. “They would receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance on the private market.”

Price would also keep Ryan’s idea to convert Medicaid and food stamps into federal block grants that states can spend with more freedom than they do now.

Though this budget stands little chance of passing because Republicans in Congress don’t have the votes to overcome a certain veto by President Barack Obama, retaining the core of Ryan’s reform package sends an important signal that these budget proposals are now the fundamental elements of any conservative spending reduction agenda. Every GOP presidential aspirant will have to weigh in on whether they support this approach and what, if any, changes they would make.

This is deliberative democracy at its best.

January 22nd, 2015 at 8:50 pm
Doctor Pay Raise Increases Medicaid Access

Think rationing health care spending has an effect of which patients doctors see?

A new study released by the New England Journal of Medicine found that Medicaid beneficiaries enjoyed a 7.7 percent bump in the number of appointments doctors scheduled with them when government reimbursement rates increased.

Unfortunately for the poor who use Medicaid, once ObamaCare’s temporary subsidy phased out, states didn’t have the extra money to continue the higher reimbursements to doctors.

And so, it’s likely that doctors will respond to the new (lower) price signal and cut back on the number of Medicaid patients they schedule.

From a policy perspective this study confirms that doctors respond to economic incentives, and that if we as a society are going to help the poorest of the poor get adequate health care Congress and the president need to start prioritizing federal spending so that there’s more money available to help those who need it.

If the folks in Washington, D.C. are looking for a place to start trimming, former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) “Wastebook 2014” is a good place to start.

October 9th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Arkansas’ Medicaid Expansion Violated Obama HHS’ Own Budget Neutrality Rules

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that the State of Arkansas and the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated federal guidelines when they agreed to expand Medicaid under a “private option” plan.

Arkansas was one of the first states to get permission from the Obama administration to expand Medicaid, but on different terms than laid out in ObamaCare.

Medicaid is the state-federal program that pays for health care services for the nation’s poor and disabled.

Under normal circumstances, Arkansas would only be allowed to get a waiver from ObamaCare’s expansion structure if it could prove that its plan would be budget neutral.

Guess what happened instead.

“According to federal regulations, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has certain procedures they must follow when reviewing state requests for Medicaid waivers,” write experts at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

“One key component of any waiver is budget neutrality: states seeking waivers must demonstrate that they will not spend any more federal dollars under the waiver than they would have without the waiver. But as it turns out, the Obama Administration cut corners and ‘did not ensure budget neutrality’ requirements were actually met before approving Arkansas’ ObamaCare expansion.”

The result is an additional $778 million more in spending on Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion than would have occurred had HHS insisted on following its own budget neutrality rules.

The entire analysis of the GAO’s report is worth reading since it explains other serious problems with the Arkansas plan. Perhaps the most egregious is the depth at which the Democratic governor’s office and loyal state agencies went to mislead Republican state legislators on the true cost of the expansion. Evidence of bad faith negotiations like this make it impossible to have a substantive policy conversation. Even now there are reports that the governor is peddling incorrect information, and trying to silence opposition.

What’s emerging from the Arkansas fiasco is the extent to which supporters of bigger government will go to entrench their policies – truth, fairness and accountability be damned.

September 9th, 2014 at 7:51 pm
ObamaCare’s Popularity Dropping Ahead of Midterms

“Just 35 percent of voters now support the Affordable Care Act, down 3 percentage points from May, according to a monthly poll by the Kaiser Health Foundation,” reports The Hill.

Moreover, the poll found that 47 percent of respondents feel negatively about the law, otherwise known as ObamaCare.

The RealClearPolitics average of six national polls is even worse: 53.8 percent say they oppose the law, with only 40.3 percent in favor.

Little wonder that the controversial health law is so unpopular. States are continuing to resist Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare’s terms for fear of a Trojan horse spending spree, and consumers are getting shut out of some of the country’s best hospitals.

All this and it is still almost two months until the midterm elections.

President Barack Obama may not be on the ballot this year, but his eponymous health law surely is.

May 15th, 2014 at 1:02 pm
ObamaCare’s Medicaid Expansion Will Cost California an Additional $1.2 Billion

“Nearly one-third of California’s total population – roughly 11.5 million people – will be enrolled in Medi-Cal next year, according to Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration,” reports the L.A. Times.

“Enrollment is expected to exceed previous estimates by 1.4 million, and administration officials said it would cost the state $1.2 billion more than originally thought.”

Brown’s health policy czar calls the jump in enrollment part of the “woodworking effect;” meaning that the media’s attention on ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges enticed many people to sign up, only to find out they already qualified for Medi-Cal (California’s name for its Medicaid program).

Readers may recall that ObamaCare expands eligibility for Medicaid into higher income brackets. To get states to go along, ObamaCare pays for all of the new spending associated with covering these new enrollees (at least until 2017). But for those who would have qualified under the old system – where states contribute 50 cents to every dollar spent – the state gets no relief.

This is the scenario California finds itself in as officials head into the budget negotiation season needing to find an additional $1.4 billion they didn’t plan for.

Ever the populist, Brown is reframing Sacramento’s miscalculation as a case of voters needing to fund their good intentions. “I’m proud we did it,” referring to the expansion as “a huge social commitment on the part of the taxpayers of California.” “But we also have to take into account this thing is growing.”

April 1st, 2014 at 6:48 pm
ObamaCare Promotion Driving Up Medicaid Applications

“According to a recent study by Avalere, the average application rate [for Medicaid] has increased 27 percent among non-expansion states and 41 percent for those expanding,” writes Angela Boothe of the American Action Forum.

For example, Tennessee – a state that chose not to expand its Medicaid program under ObamaCare – is still experiencing severe pressure on its budget due to high numbers of people trying to enroll. Though only the beginning of April, the Volunteer State has already enrolled the maximum number of people it projected to cover for the year. Adding to the pressure on state budget writers is the reality that by refusing to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare – which covers 100 percent of the increased costs until 2017 – part of the expense for covering the new enrollees falls on the state. If you work in a non-Medicaid state agency in Tennessee, beware bean counters wielding knives.

The Avalere report highlights the fact that ObamaCare creates a unique burden for non-expansion states like Tennessee. Because of the controversial health law’s media saturation, millions of people are aware that they are probably eligible for some sort of government assistance to purchase health coverage. Of these, many are discovering that they already qualify for Medicaid, even before ObamaCare was enacted. The awkward situation for states like Tennessee is that ObamaCare is still expanding Medicaid, just without any extra financial help.

If non-expansion states like Tennessee continue to see record Medicaid enrollment increases this year, don’t be surprised if anti-ObamaCare governors and legislatures start to rethink their opposition to expansion. Of course, as I’ve explained elsewhere, it would be a serious mistake to swap a three-year federal bailout for decades of increased costs by expanding Medicaid on ObamaCare’s terms. But for desperate lawmakers looking for a quick fix, ObamaCare’s “free money” may be too tempting to pass up.

January 24th, 2014 at 3:18 pm
NY’s Schumer Calls on Dems to Defend Government

Talk about a New York state of mind.

In the run-up to the 2014 election, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “charts an agenda for Congress that includes extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, making college more affordable and investing in infrastructure,” according to the L.A. Times.

“Times are now ripe for a renewed and robust defense of government,” Schumer said in a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. And he clearly doesn’t fear any potential downside. “The best way to deal with the tea party’s obsessive anti-government mania is to confront it directly, by showing the people the need for government to help them out of their morass.”

Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The real maniacs in Washington, D.C. are liberals like Schumer who think Americans are eager to be told how government will meddle even more in the economy. Raising the minimum wage in an anemic employment market is a sure way to increase joblessness. But maybe that’s the point. The result is more people directly dependent on government outlays for their daily needs.

And then there is the inflationary effect of government spending on the price of college tuition, as well as the fact that ‘infrastructure investment’ is really code for pork barrel projects channeled to public employee unions.

Schumer’s call for a full-throated defense of government may get cheers in the liberal salons of the NYC-DC corridor, but echoing it would bring swift electoral defeat for his colleagues in more conservative states.

November 29th, 2013 at 5:37 pm
Obamacare Swells New York’s Medicaid Rolls

“Since the Oct. 1 rollout of the Affordable Care Act in New York, nearly half of New Yorkers who signed up for insurance on the state-run exchange qualified for Medicaid,” reports the New York Post.

Apparently, the media attention surrounding Obamacare enticed many lower-income Empire State residents to apply for insurance, only to find out they qualified for taxpayer subsidized Medicaid instead. If every New Yorker that qualifies for Obamacare’s expanded version of Medicaid actually signs up, the state’s total Medicaid population could hit 6 million in a few years. That would be nearly 1/3rd of the state’s population.

The implications for federal spending levels are ominous. Currently, Medicaid spending is split between states and the feds. But once 2014 arrives, “the feds will pick up 75 percent of the tab and eventually 90 percent for childless Medicaid adults, instead of the current 50 percent.”

As the Post’s article indicates, Obamacare’s failure to lure enough buyers onto its public-private insurance exchanges is only half the story. The real win for those who want to impose a government-run, single-payer system onto the American health care system may be in the massive expansion of Medicaid consumers paid for out of the federal treasury. Thus, even if the public-private part of Obamacare fails, the number of citizens depending on Washington for health care will increase dramatically. In the long run, that may be just what Obamacare’s staunchest supporters desire.