Tuesday, December 22, 2009
What Santa, er, Obama is about to deliver to Tenn.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he has enough votes to pass ObamaCare on Christmas Eve. How fitting. Reid put favors into the bill to secure the votes of a few select Senators. Thus, ObamaCare, in its current form, is a huge lump of coal that's going to be shoved up ... er, into many state governments' stockings come Christmas morning. Take Tennesssee, for example:
To secure the vote of Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, Reid put a provision into ObamaCare whereby the federal government will pick up the full cost of Nebraska's mandated Medicaid expansion, at an estimated cost of $100 million over ten years.
The Medicaid mandate, which as we've seen ain't gonna cost Nebraska a thing, is going to add billions of dollars to Tennessee's budget over the next decade.
Now, as much as I've criticized Governor Phil Bredesen over the years, I admire him for telling the truth 'bout how Tennessee's taxpayers are about to get a royal Obama screwing. As Middle Tennessee State University business professor, and former Metro-Nashville Councilman, Horace Johns pointed out in a recent Nashville Today commentary (sadly, it's not online):
"Bredesen fears that [ObamaCare] could cost Tennessee $785 million over five years, plus unknown costs, [and] could dump an extra $3 billion to TennCare from 2014 to 2019. This is because [ObamaCare] envisions state Medicaid programs like TennCare expanding health insurance coverage to millions."
An extra $3 billion from 2014 to 2019. Let that sink in for a few moments ...
If only more of Bredesen's fellow Democrat governors - whose states aren't getting federal Medicaid subsidies - had the balls to follow his truth-telling lead about what ObamaCare is going to do to already-strained state budgets. Maybe ObamaCare would've already been run over by a reindeer. As it stands, the only folks who're destined to get run over are taxpayers in states like Tennessee.
To secure the vote of Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, Reid put a provision into ObamaCare whereby the federal government will pick up the full cost of Nebraska's mandated Medicaid expansion, at an estimated cost of $100 million over ten years.
The Medicaid mandate, which as we've seen ain't gonna cost Nebraska a thing, is going to add billions of dollars to Tennessee's budget over the next decade.
Now, as much as I've criticized Governor Phil Bredesen over the years, I admire him for telling the truth 'bout how Tennessee's taxpayers are about to get a royal Obama screwing. As Middle Tennessee State University business professor, and former Metro-Nashville Councilman, Horace Johns pointed out in a recent Nashville Today commentary (sadly, it's not online):
"Bredesen fears that [ObamaCare] could cost Tennessee $785 million over five years, plus unknown costs, [and] could dump an extra $3 billion to TennCare from 2014 to 2019. This is because [ObamaCare] envisions state Medicaid programs like TennCare expanding health insurance coverage to millions."
An extra $3 billion from 2014 to 2019. Let that sink in for a few moments ...
If only more of Bredesen's fellow Democrat governors - whose states aren't getting federal Medicaid subsidies - had the balls to follow his truth-telling lead about what ObamaCare is going to do to already-strained state budgets. Maybe ObamaCare would've already been run over by a reindeer. As it stands, the only folks who're destined to get run over are taxpayers in states like Tennessee.
# posted by Joltin' Django @ Tuesday, December 22, 2009 
