Are You Aware Of These Massive Outlays?
My guess is that of the people who actually pay tax, most of them are sick of how the federal government spends their money. It should be all of them, but maybe a few are just happy to contribute to a system that sometimes does good, but more often squanders the taxpayer’s dime.
You might just need to pick your jaw up off the floor after you hear these numbers.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), outlaid over $1.113 trillion in fiscal year 2013. That’s $1,113,000,000,000 – and yes, that is a record for the most money spent by any federal agency or department in a single year – ever.
As you might expect, CMS runs the federal government’s major healthcare programs, including the disastrous Obamacare insurance exchange.
Either we are really, really sick, or there is a lot of fiddling going on.
The Monthly Treasury Statement for September, which was released in late October showed that it isn’t the first year that this organization paid out more than a trillion dollars. In 2010, it was $1.035 trillion and in 2012, it was $1.052 trillion.
The Major Outlays
The majority of the massive outflow of taxpayer money went to “Grants to States” for Medicaid. This table shows other amounts:
Medicaid Grants to States: $265.3 billion Federal Hospital Insurance Fund: $269 billion Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund: $245.7 billion Healthcare Trust Funds: $242.4 billion Medicare Prescription Drug program: $61.6 billion
We are told the people in this organization are going to bring health care costs down, but spending $650 million on a single website that doesn’t work seems like a bad way to start.
Comparing what they spent to a historical amount, in fiscal 2013, in inflation-adjusted dollars, CMS spent more than the entire 1965 federal budget. That was the year President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation that created Medicare and Medicaid.
According to a federal spokesman, “CMS remains the largest purchaser of healthcare in the United States. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act provisions, CMS has the opportunity to provide affordable healthcare to millions of additional Americans.”
To put it in perspective, the Department of Defense spent $607.8 billion and the Social Security Administration had outlays of $867.3 billion.
Interest alone on the Treasury Debt Securities cost taxpayers $415 billion.
And what does it cost to run this massive organization? In Financial Year 2012, it was $3.82 billion. Stand by for an increase, though, because as Obamacare kicks in, in 2014, this department is asking for their own budget to be increased to $5.217 billion. That looks a lot like an increase to me, a 36.5% increase. Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see costs going down any time soon.
There is so much fraud in the system that $640 million of their 2014 budget is to be used to combat payment fraud.
What a system!
I wonder who will be discussing this budget during the 2014 midterm elections. My guess is that it won’t be Democrats.
