The faster ObamaCare gets obliterated, the better.
In cash-strapped Washington, Obama’s $1 trillion health care law is presenting a tempting target for lawmakers seeking funds for other projects, as Congress last week raided the health care piggy bank for the third time in less than a year.
Congress last week axed a part of Democrats’ signature domestic achievement to find $11 billion to cover the cost of repealing a withholding tax that otherwise would have hit government contractors in 2013. Obama signed that bill into law on Monday.
The withholding bill follows two other efforts — one in December and another in April — that reworked the health care law to squeeze savings for other priorities. The December bill funded higher payments for doctors who treat Medicare patients, and the April legislation repealed a paperwork provision in the original health care law that businesses said would be onerous.
All told, Congress and the president have tapped some $50 billion earmarked to pay for benefits and programs in the health care overhaul in future years to fund more-immediate spending needs.
Both earlier efforts dealt with health care issues, but the bill Obama signed Monday marks the first time that the massive 2010 law has been tapped to fund something completely unrelated.
“They don’t want to open it up. They’re getting forced to open it up now and then, but to open it up for budgetary reasons, I think the pressures are pretty real,” said former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin, who said it’s easier to cut future benefits than it is to cut programs that are already paying out.
Most of the health care law’s benefits won’t begin paying out for several years, and Mr. Holtz-Eakin said he expects legislators to revisit the law again before then.
The failure of the bipartisan supercommittee this week to come up with a plan to shrink the federal deficit and find spending cuts and revenues is likely to increase the pressure to raid the health care program for funds.
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/24/money-slated-for-health-law-gets-detoured/
ObamaCare hacks broke all land speed records running away from this train wreck. The most despicable thing is, after all the hard sell spinning, threats, and venomous epithets hurled at opponents, the asswipes who rammed this bill through and supported the disaster, exempted themselves from the consequences with waivers. No one in their right mind wanted this shit to begin with. Now that hospitals are going through severe cutbacks, insurance companies are raising their rates, and doctors are refusing new Medicare patients, all in anticipation of the 2014 start of ObamaCare, none of them want it.
If all goes well, ObamaCare will be in tatters by then.