The Rising

Well, it seems that Obamacare might not be the great money saver that the Obama administration says it is after all:

In a study to be released Tuesday, Charles Blahous, who serves as public trustee overseeing Medicare and Social Security finances, says federal accounting practices have obscured the true fiscal impact of ObamaCare.

Officially, the health care law is still projected to help reduce government red ink. The Congressional Budget Office, the government's non-partisan fiscal umpire, said in an estimate last year that repealing the law actually would increase deficits by $210 billion from 2012-2021.

The CBO, however, has not updated that projection. If $210 billion sounds like a big cushion, it's not. The government has recently been running annual deficits in the $1 trillion range.

"Taken as a whole, the enactment of the (health care law) has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook," Blahous wrote in his 52-page analysis, released by George Mason University's Mercatus Center. "The (law) both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law."

The cost of "free" is always passed on to the consumer. But hey, at least it would give the IRS something to do...