Front-loaded health-care ‘fees’: Who believes that $39 billion won’t be spent before 2014?

One way the Democratic leaders make the health-care bill look less expensive than it is, is to impose $13 billion in annual “fees” on brand drugs, medical devices and insurance companies starting next year, but to delay the actual health-care expansion until 2014.

That would be $39 billion saved up for health care by 2014. But considering the track record of Congress in the last 40 years, who honestly believes Congress wouldn’t spent that $39 billion on other things long before the health-care program kicked in?

It would be an interesting experiment in temptation. I doubt Congress could resist. The early money Pelosi and Reid tossed in to “balance” the proposal just wouldn’t be there.

Frank Warner