Of all the claims deployed in favor of ObamaCare, and there are many, the most preposterous is that a new open-ended entitlement of insuring 32 million more people will somehow reduce the budget deficit and save money too!
The accounting gimmicks are legion, but to pick out a few:
It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies.
Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion.
A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design.
The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.
The CBO budget gnomes are required to "score" what's on paper in front of them, no matter how unrealistic, and that's the method its Congressional masters prefer. The political class makes believe that CBO's forecasts are carved into stone tablets through divine revelation, but all they really show is that politicians have rigged the budget rules to hide the true cost of entitlements.