Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

Here, I'll give you an idea. My thought is based on the premise that a national healthcare system, something that will result in the vast majority of citizens being insured, is a good thing, an objective that should be compared to other potential uses of taxpayer money on a list of national priorities. That is, I don't think you should just look at the ACA by itself and expect it to be self-funding. The question is, in my mind anyway, what other elements of government spending with lower national priorities might be reduced in order to pay for an attractive and needed national healthcare program.

ACA is far from perfect. It has some very attractive parts, others that probably should be eliminated or substantially changed, and a few that probably should be added. That legislative effort should go on.

But here's how I would pay for the $1.76 trillion cost projected by the Congressional Budget office for the period from 2013 to 2022. While the costs might not be exactly flat year-to-year, what we're looking for is about $176 billion per year. Just for some perspective, that's 4.7% of total annual federal spending for all purposes.

I'll provide a few ideas on how to fund this program, which I believe should place high on the list of national priorities. What I'll propose will exceed the annual costs of ACA. My assumpmtions, of course, will be to fund ACA with cuts to other federal spending categories which I believe to place lower on the list of national priorities. My priority list and lists by others could be different, of course. I'm working from a baseline of President Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal, which includes $3.67 trillion in spending. That was a 3.7 percent decline from 2012 levels, after adjusting for inflation.

But anyway, here goes...

• Cut Discretionary Spending By 5%. This is exactly Mitt Romney's proposal as a start to cutting government spending, I believe. Such a 5% cut would fund $62 billion or 35% of ACA's annual cost.

• Cut the defense budget by 10%. This would produce savings of $65.3 billion per year, or about 37% of the annual cost of ACA. With the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, a cut of this amount should be almost "invisible" to the Pentagon.

• Cut Medicare Spending by 3%. Such a cut would produce $24.5 billion in annual savings or 14% of the annual cost of ACA. A cut of this magnitude could possibly be achieved without even effecting benefit payments to participants. A cut totaling 3% to administrative costs and fraud reductions should be reasonably easy to achieve.

• Cut Social Security spending by 2%. That would produce savings of $15 billion per year or about 8.5% of the annual cost of ACA. Like my proposed Medicare cuts, this amount could probably be achieved by cuts in adminstrative costs without effecting payments to beneficiaries.

• Cut unemployment benefits by 10%. This would produce annual savings of $12.1 billion or 6.9% of the annual ACA cost. These cuts could be achieved by beginning to scale back on the extended unemployment benefits approved by Congress in 2008-2011. As the economy improves and unemployment declines, a cut of this amount should be very achieveable.

• Increase the tax rate on the top 5% of wage earners by 1%. This would increase the average rate paid by the top 1% from 24% to 25% and for those taxpayers in the top 2-5%, their rates would increase from an average of 18% to 19%. A small tax increase like this would produce increased revenues of $10.25 billion or 5.8% of the annual cost of ACA.

So there you go, Bucco. With just a few very achievable cuts in spending and a tiny tax increase, the cost of the high national priority Affordable Healthcare Act could be more than paid for. The spending cuts I've suggested would produce $189.2 billion per year in funding for ACA, more than its annual cost. Then I would suggest that Congress begin to study ACA itself, to begin to eliminate its higher cost-lower priority elements.