November 19, 2009 9:33AM # What Will the Reid Bill Cost? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Michael Cannon has some astute analysis of the Senate health care bill [below](https://www.cato.org/2009/11/19/reid-health-bill-perpetuates-the-1-5-trillion-fraud/). I posted these thoughts at [Politico’s Arena](http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/David_Boaz_46FB205E-8738-41BF-8B2D-F81A954F2BEE.html): According to the Chamber of Commerce [polls](https://www.uschamber.com/assets/uscc/healthcare_toplines.pdf), strong majorities in every state they polled believe the health care bills will increase the deficit. In this case the public’s cynical instincts are almost certain to be more accurate than the computer models of the CBO. As David Dickson of the *Washington Times* reviewed [yesterday,](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/18/health-programs-have-history-of-cost-overruns//print/) government health care programs have a history of cost overruns. And not small overruns, like overdrawing your checking account — massive, order-of-magnitude cost overruns. Is that because politicians intentionally overstate the benefits and underestimate the costs of their proposals? Or just that computer models aren’t very good at predicting how entitlements programs change behavior? Either way, just look at the record: In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee said the entire Medicare program would cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $98 billion. In 1987, Congress projected that Medicaid would make special relief payments to hospitals of less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost, just five years after the projection, was $17 billion. Similarly, Medicare’s home care benefit was projected in 1988 to cost $4 billion in 1993, but the actual cost — again, just five years after the projection — was $10 billion. The government is running a trillion-dollar annual deficit already, and Congress and the president propose to create a new program that promises to cover millions more people with health insurance, drag currently insured people onto government programs, and save billions of dollars in the process. No wonder levels of trust in government are at [record lows](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125694556329419839.html). ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).