So Much For ObamaCare's Savings

As noted on these pages and elsewhere, government programs always cost far more than their original projections. Medicare has cost more than 10 times as much as initially estimated. It took Medicaid, the government's other mammoth health care program, a mere five years to spend twice as much as early estimates said it would. At the state level, the story remains the same. Maine's 2003 program to cover the uninsured has already cost taxpayers there $150 million, but it was sold as a plan that would save them money. Tennessee's arrangement became such a parasite — eating up 40% of the state's budget by 2008 — that it had to be shut down. Massachusetts' program overran cost projections so sharply it had to throw 30,000 beneficiaries off the rolls last year. Despite this clear history, lawmakers always promise the next program won't cost taxpayers — or that it'll save them money...more