It Will Bend Upward

clipped from www.qando.net This was the difference between the Obama administration and the CBO estimate based on the Obama administration’s 10 year budget. At the time the CBO said that the budget estimate would raise the debt by 9.1 trillion dollars. The Obama administration said, at the time, that the CBO was wrong. Quietly, at 7pm this last Friday night, the Obama administration raised its estimate of what their budget would add to the debt by the 2 trillion the CBO had said was always there. What that means for the chart is you can ignore the pastel red bars – the Obama estimate – in favor of the dark red bars. So when the administration says that health care reform will save money and the CBO says it will “bend the cost curve upward”, what should this example lead us to believe? The cost curve is going to bend upward.