It appears that the Obama administration has decided to disown the venerable Senator.  No wonder.  The Congressional Budget Office estimated the ten-year cost of Sen. Kennedy’s bill at $1 trillion, but admitted that its analysis was incomplete. 

Now the consulting group HSI Network, LLC comes foward with an estimate of $4 trillion:

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) have proposed a health reform bill called the Affordable Health Choice Act (AHC) that seeks to reduce the number of uninsured and increase health system efficiency and quality. The draft legislation was introduced on June 9th, 2009. The proposal provided adequate information to suggest what the impact would be of AHC using the ARCOLA™ simulation model. AHC would include an individual mandate as well as a pay or plan provision. In addition, it would include a means-tested subsidy with premium supports available for those up to 500% of the federal poverty level. Public plan options in three tiers: Gold, Silver and Bronze are proposed in a structure similar to that of the Massachusetts Connector, except that it is called The Gateway. These public plan options would contain costs by reimbursing providers up to 10% above current reimbursement rates. There is no mention of removing the tax exclusion associated with employer sponsored health insurance. There is also no mention of changes to Medicare and Medicaid, other than fraud prevention, that could provide cost-savings for the coverage expansion proposed. Below, we summarize the impact of the proposed plan in terms of the reduction on uninsured, the 2010 cost, as well as the ten year cost of the plan in 2010 dollars.

HELP Affordable Health Choices Act

• Uninsurance is reduced by 99% to cover approximately 47,700,000 people
• Subsidy - Tax Recovery = Net cost:
  • $279,000,000,000 subsidy to the individual market
  • $180,000,000,000 subsidy to the ESI market with
  • Net cost: $460,500,000,000 (annual)
  • Net cost: $4,098,000,000,000 (10 year)
• Private sector crowd out: ~79,300,000 lives

HSI figures that a lot more people will take advantage of federal health insurance subsidies, driving costs up far more than indicated by the CBO figure.  (H/t to Phil Klein at the American Spectator online.)

Of course, no one knows what the bill would really cost in operation.  But the history of social insurance and welfare programs is sky-rocketing expense well beyond original projections.  Go back and look at the initial cost estimates for Medicare and Social Security, and you will run from the room simultaneously laughing and crying.

Health care reform would be serious business at any moment of time, but especially when the country faces $10 trillion in new debt over the next decade on top of the existing $11 trillion national debt.  And with the $100 trillion Medicare/Social Security financial bomb lurking in the background, rushing to leap off the financial cliff with this sort of health care legislation would be utterly irresponsible.