Obamacare's spending gimmicks being exposed

It is already clear that Obamacare supposedly being paid for wasn't accurate. But the picture keeps on getting worse. The CLASS Act, Ted Kennedy's long-term care for the elderly, was to start collecting premiums five years before it would start paying benefits (and counting those premiums as deficit reduction even though they would eventually need to be paid out in benefits). This allowed Democrats to able to make the program appear to be in the black by $70 billion in its first ten years. All together that accounted for about half of the overall “deficit reduction” the Democrats claimed from the health care bill. From Politico:

“The Obama administration today acknowledged what they refused to admit when they passed their partisan health bill: The CLASS Act was a budget gimmick that might enhance the numbers on a Washington bureaucrat’s spreadsheet,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan declared that “the smoke and mirrors that the Democrats employed to sell their health care overhaul are finally falling away, one broken promise at a time. … Now it is time for Congress to do the responsible thing: Repeal the disastrous new law and replace it with true, patient-centered reforms.” . . .

But the fallout from the CLASS decision is not just political, but practical as well.

The Congressional Budget Office had scored CLASS as achieving $86 billion in savings over the next decade, because it would have collected premiums for five years before paying any benefits. In a conference call with reporters, Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee said the Office of Management and Budget would "likely reduce" the baseline budget for 2013 by taking CLASS out of the mix. . . .