A couple things really bug me about the healthcare debate. Firstly… “it’ll cost 30 trillion dollars”… that’s a ten year figure. No one ever says “over ten years”. A study has every reason to use a 10 year window, because the costs will fluctuate, i.e. generally higher start up costs then leveling off. But it’s over ten years. You might as well say it’s going to be 300 trillion if you are not going to state the time period. To me the only acceptable reason to leave off the time period is if you are referring to ONE YEAR figures, since that’s the tempo of the federal budget.
Simple facts like this should be part of the rhetoric to which they belong. If people want to say “30 trillion dollars” 1000 times they should be saying “over ten years” about 999 times.
Secondly, “how are we going to pay that?!?!” is simple… The answer is we’re already paying that! It’s going to be payed with the same 30 trillion we already spend.
In fact the study being quoted says we’re going to pay a couple trillion more than that.
The first job in honest debate should be to get all the small facts and extra numbers on the table. Don’t try to fool people into narratives based on missing facts. Everyone should be getting the same facts. Reality doesn’t care about your narrative, but if it’s good, the facts will only help. Don’t skip fundamental numbers.
On the other hand it’s amazing to see this being debated at all. So that’s good.