It’s Official: Americans Spent All Their “Gas Savings” On Obamacare

Tyler Durden's picture

Last quarter, when we showed what was “The Reason For The “Surge” In Q3 GDP”, some were shocked to learn that in the quarter in which US GDP posted a 5% surge, it was none other than Obamacare – a mandatory tax according to the Supreme Court which has the benefit of flowing through the US income statement – which contributed the bulk of this upside.

 

We are happy, and we use the term loosely, that history has just repeated itself, and now that the final number is available, what we wrote a month ago in “Here Is What Americans Spent Their “Gas Savings” On” has just been confirmed, and as the chart below shows, in the final revision of Q4 GDP, while virtually every other category of household spending was largely unchanged or revised lower, it was Healthcare, of which Obamacare was the biggest contributor on the margin, which saw an unprecedented surge in total spending, from $1.858 trillion to $1.871.9 trillion just between the second and final GDP revisions: a bump of $13.9 billion, without which Q3 GDP would have grown well below 2%!

 

It gets better, because in the fourth quarter total spending on healthcare in chained-dollars was a whopping $35.3 billion. An all time record!

 

And with that we are happy to have unmasked the two great mysteries of the US economy in recent history: the first being why there is no wage growth, which as we showed previously is because all the wage growth was going to the 20% of the workforce that is supervisors and bosses. For everyone else: sorry.

 

… and now we have solved the mystery of why US households did not spend all those billions in “dropping gas price” windfalls – the answer is that they did spend all this money.

 On Obamacare.

 

6
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
TE
TE

All mandated costs up, all wants/needs down, hence the continued use of credit.

It will end spectacularly, and please, just ignore that a whopping HUGE part of the healthcare “spend” is the freaking government.

I don’t visit medical facilities often, but I can tell you that they have progressively been occupied by two types: 1 – government paid and 2 – public/union employer paid.

The rest of us can’t afford it anymore, and are probably better off if we find other ways to health anyway.

Econman

Supervisors & bosses make the gains?
People profit from no competition or the government’s protection?
Police, politicians, the wealthy not held to the same laws as the public?

Sounds more & more like the Soviet Union every day.

Bostonbob

I spent mine on tequila.
Bob.

AC
AC

Affordable Care Act, AKA the Health Insurance Corporation Profit Protection Act?

The obscenity is that a UK-style national health service for America could be fully funded at the same per capita rate as the NHS is, for less than the current annual US government spending on health care – with no private spending needed at all. We’d still have crappy health care, but at least we would be paying about 40% of what we *are* paying for crappy health care.

No matter how you look at it, the ACA is a screw job for everyone that isn’t a health insurance corporation.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Its a scam.Rationing,all one has to do is look at vet admin to see a mirror image of Obama care.Redistribution.With fines linked to IRS, bank accounts,no one will own any property in a few short years-Polosi Wasserman shultz said 5 years in prison plus 250,000.00 fine for penalty-I say start turning the tables on the politicians and run them out on a rail as they say

Econman

Fucking retarded liberals tried to argue when I said this would drive up costs. It’s a government program messing in the private sector, the language written by insurance companies. What other result could it have?

The only question I have everyday is, “Who will do something more stupid today, Dumbocrats or Decepticons/fake Republicans?”

If every public school student just read Ron Paul or Paul Craig Roberts for 1 class per day, the nation’s IQ would double, even with bb added in!

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading