Obamaconimics–My New Family Budget!

“There’s a way of paying for this that doesn’t add to the deficits,” President Obama said. “All this money that I just talked about, those are hard dollars.  We know they are and so we know that this would not add to the deficit. It doesn’t count all the savings that may come from prevention, may come from eliminating all the paperwork and bureaucracy because we’ve put forward health IT, it doesn’t come from the evidence-based care and changes in reimbursement that I’ve already discussed about.”

The President continued, “the Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, which sort of polices what all various programs cost, they’re not willing to credit us with those savings.  They say, ‘That may be nice, that may save a lot of money, but we can’t be certain.’ So we expect that not only are we going to pay for health care reform in a deficit-neutral way, but that’s it also going to achieve big savings across the system — including in the private sector where the Congressional Budget Office never gives us any credit — but if hospitals and doctors are starting to operate in a smarter way, that’s going to help you even if you’re not involved in a government system.”

This was what the President said last night after the airing of the Government-Provided-Health-Care infomercial that ran on ABC.  I didn’t watch it; I wanted to but I couldn’t tear myself away from old Reba episodes.  But reading these words today on Jake Tapper’s blog made me stop and think, that maybe I’ve been doing my budget wrong all along.

I haven’t ever taken into account the savings, for example, that I gain by not being a heroin addict.  That must add up to several hundred dollars a month, right?  I have no idea, actually, but let’s say it saves me $500 per month by not buying heroin.  That’s an additional $6,000 per year.

Then, there’s a huge amount of money that I save by not owning a yacht, and making those payments, not to mention the maintenance costs.  I’m just guessing here, but I would say that this preventative measure alone, saves me tens of thousands of dollars a year.  Maybe…what do you think…..$25,000?

Probably a low estimate, but we’ll go with that.

Then it dawned on me that I rarely (well, really never) fly someone in from Chicago to make pizza for me and my family.  I’m not sure what that would cost, but I never do it, so I must be saving a lot of money.  Probably around $5000 a year.

So, just by remembering those three preventative measures that I take every month, I have found an additional $36,000 per year for my own budget!

My, my, my!  An extra $36,000 each year is amazing!  And if I can do this, so can you!  We can all begin to find those hidden savings that we’ve been neglecting to add in to our budgets.

If it works for the government, then it should work for me.

Right?

Off to think up find some more preventative measures.

Tagged as: Barack Obama, budgets, Congressional Budget Office, economics, Health care, saving, spending