Monday, November 23, 2009

Why we need Health Care Reform---the US Budget Deficit

One of the top priorities of the Federal government over the long term is to cut the deficit.  In fact one of the single biggest reasons I opposed the Bush tax cuts was that is took a US budget surplus and turned it into budget deficits leading the US Government to bring in less revenue that was currently committed to by the Federal Government.

One of the key reasons I support health care reform is that the key source of our long term deficits are health care costs and starting the process of cutting costs we begin the serious task of taking on the long term deficit.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research's Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator is a great tool to get a better context on the health care debate...

Former Chair of the Henry County Republican Party Charles Mobley has taken to calling me "The Political Scientist" because I advocate research over political theory.  My degree in political science predisposes me to empirical data--and having watched a lot of nonsense transpire in the past two years working as a legislative aide at the Captiol I can tell you point blank citizens need to do their own homework because our politicians and the media can't be trusted when it comes to giving you "all the facts". 

So here's your "homework" so to speak--go check out the Calculator.

CEPR's calculator does a great job of putting health care reform into context using empirical data in an easily assessable manner.  So take a moment and check out the calculator----sidenote--- I have to use firefox to view it, when I did my last Internet Explorer update the Calculator no long works for me for some reason.  

Here are the long-term deficits with no change to our health care system in yellow and in blue you can see the deficit if health care costs are purely coming from aging within the population rather than the skyrocketing health care inflation we currently face.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols

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