The Great Debate

–Peter J. Pitts is President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. The views expressed are his own. –

Today, the Congressional Budget Office released its latest estimate of the price tag of the Democrats’ health reform package. At $940 billion, this version of reform will cost more than the measures passed by the House and Senate late last year. More is not always better.

CBO also says the bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years and by $1.2 trillion over the following decade. That’s right. It will reduce the deficit by significantly increasing federal spending.  Only in America.

While they’re at it, they should also predict the weather for the next decade.

Let’s face it: Uncle Sam has a poor track record of forecasting how much new programs will cost. Medicare’s progenitors, for example, stated in 1967 that the entitlement would cost $12 billion by 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 amounted to $110 billion — nearly 10 times the initial estimate. Oops.

–- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-

The next time you take your child to a doctor, scrutinize carefully the doctor’s bill.  What it won’t tell you is that an average of 10 cents out of every dollar you pay goes to the malpractice insurance doctors must have to protect themselves in case a patient sues them.

Malpractice premiums cost some doctors many tens of thousands of dollars a year, not because an individual doctor has a history of making mistakes, but because in some states juries make excessively generous awards knowing that insurance companies pay.

– Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. –

It’s welcome news that President Obama will turn his attention to immigration reform this year, as was announced on Wednesday by Deputy Assistant to the President Cecilia Muñoz. Economic recovery will happen more quickly if both high- and low-skill immigrants are permitted to enter the United States and work legally.

Two years ago, when Congress was considering comprehensive immigration reform, both President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Congressional Budget Office, headed by Peter Orszag, an economist closely identified with the Democratic Party, estimated that the benefits of additional immigrants outweighed the costs. If Congress allowed more immigration, then American taxpayers would come out ahead financially.