The Story of Obamacare Cost Inflation as Told to a Future Generation*

*Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1897-1882), Paul Revere’s Ride

Listen my children, and you shall hear, of  the drama,

Of the four year health inflation ride of Barack Obama,

On the twenty third of March twenty of twenty ten,

The Patient Protection and Affordable bill passed,

Without a single Republican vote caste.

Most of you are still alive it is clear I fear,

Who remember that infamous day and year,

When Obamacare passed with a cost now so dear.

The original cost was estimated for a decade at $900 billion,

Later revised by Congressional Business Office to $2.7 trillion,

A billion dollars here, a trillion dollars there,
What the hell, as long as all get their fair share.
Who could possibly object,
When cost was no object.

Still how could the estimate come to this,

With such a massive miscalculation miss?
When it contributed so much to the national debt,
That t left you and your children financially bereft.
Part of it was simply sleight of hand –  an artful  feint,
Delaying it until 2014 then to 2015 to avoid complaint.
Part of it was simply $716 billion ravings,
About ten year promises  of cost  savings,
Much of the estimate was purely theoretical,
But to challenge it was deemed heretical.

It was to be cchieved by cutting pay to hospitals and primary physicians,

Through accountable care organizations of hospitals and captive clinicians,

It was to be enforced by a 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board.
Who would decapitate hospital and  doctors so the law we could afford.
But alas the IPAB,
May not come to be.
And when it comes time for the Feds theor  plan to implement,
State exchanges may not be ready for big government replacement.

Then five red state Democratic Senators like Max Baucus

Announced they were retiring, in effect leaving the blue caucus,

Would Obamacare be delayed or stranded,

Would its implementation be abandoned?

Please, please, do not be offended,

But I must leave you suspended.

I don’t know how the story ended.