According to a pair of Capitol Hill sources, preliminary estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that a strong public option–the kind that the House of Representatives is putting in its reform bill–should net somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion in savings over ten years.
Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic : EXCLUSIVE: Early CBO Score on Public Plan. It’s Good! (via soupsoup)
This is a joke. Healthcare is a $2.5 trillion dollar per year industry. Over the course of ten years, let’s just keep it dead stupid simple (and not even include the nearly 10% growth year over year):
$2.5 tril x 10 years = $25 trillion (way under actual costs by the way)
$150Bil/$25 trillion = 0.006% savings
Don’t let these numbers fool you. There is a much, much deeper problem than crying in the ocean with $150B in savings over 10 years.
Please start laughing (or crying) now. And here’s even more perspective on this issue.