If you want to have a serious discussion, why don't you start by naming the assumptions that you think are unrealistic?
OK I have not read the whole thing but here are some examples.
- The $500 billion of unspecified savings from medicare. Even when/if people come up with savings it will be needed just to keep medicare solvent.
- Most people will get to keep the insurance they have. There have been some detailed studies from capable consulting forms that say the numbers of folks thrown
off their employer based system will be orders of magnitude higher than the bill states.
- No realistic annual increases to doctors and hospitals, the so-called doc fix that gets added each year.
- No provision to increase the supply of doctors although demand will increase. I jokingly asked a doctor the other day how many extra hours a day he will work to
cover a large increase in potential consumers.
- Expecting that the mandate which in the early years is only a fine of about $800 bucks per year will "force people into the system" which costs a lot more than that.
Might have been realistic if they had a catastropic insurance program for the healthy young that are willing to take their chances.
- The taxes built into the program. Obama is calling for higher taxes in many forms already for the wealthy. How many times can you count the same tax increase.
- I don't know what they used for health care inflation but am willing to bet it is lower than what our actual experience has/ will be.
That was a couple of minutes of thinking. Now I don't know or acknowledge the $17 trillion number, probably BS as well.
Just doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you can't give tens of millions of people something for free and expect it to have a cost of below zero.