Apples to Oranges
by James Glaser
January 11, 2009

People say you are comparing apples to oranges if you are comparing two different things to make a point. Most of the time they will say that when your point doesn't agree with theirs. Well, that is what I am about to do. I am going to compare two different things to try and make a point.

This past July, Wanda and I bought a house. Before we bought, we did our homework. We found out how much the owners would sell it for. We had it inspected to see if there were any unknown costs involved. We found what the taxes and insurance would cost, and maybe most important of all, we found a fixed rate mortgage. We did everything we could think of before we signed on the dotted line to know what that house would cost us.

Of course there are always a few variables that will change your payment. Taxes can go up and so can your insurance premium, but the bulk of our monthly payment, the mortgage, is a fixed amount. Sure there are always things that come along that will cost us extra. We don't know how long the appliances will last, and the well pump could go and some day we will have to redo the roof, but those are all things for which you can put money away, and you hope they all don't need replacement at the same time. So, I guess for this discussion, our house is the apple.

Now here is the orange. That would be the health care bill going through Congress right now. True, it is totally different from buying a house, but like a house you should know what you are getting into before you buy anything. When we bought our house, it was after looking at many different houses, but when we were all done, we knew exactly what we were buying.

Now no one in America can say that about the health care plan. The House passed one plan, and the Senate passed another. Like our house, our government doesn't have enough money to buy either health care plan, so Washington will have to borrow. The problem with that is they don't know how much the plan will cost, and they can't get a fixed rate "mortgage" to buy it. The government might know what they have to pay for borrowed money this year, but that doesn't mean that rate will be the same next year or a decade for now.

Also with a health care plan, you can't buy insurance to protect the nation if something goes wrong.

Now, Congress and the White House tell us that they had the Congressional Budget Office figure out what this health care bill would cost, but there is a problem with that, too. The Congressional Budget Office can only project costs with the figures given to them by Congress. Well Congress keeps changing those numbers, and so projections given on one set of figures do not hold with a new set of figures. Here we go again—it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges huh?

So, here we are as a nation buying a multi trillion dollar long term health care program. We know we can't afford it. We don't know what it will cost us to borrow the money needed to buy it. Heck, we don't even know what we are buying or when we will be allowed to use the benefits.

Wanda and I are very satisfied with the purchase of our home. We did our homework. (No pun intended) It is the house we wanted. We bought it at a price we can afford with payments that are at a fixed rate. We knew almost everything about the house and land before we closed the deal.

That is what I want Washington to do with this Health Care Bill. First off, I want to know what we are buying. Then I want to know if it is the plan that we all really want. Next, I want to know its long term cost, and what our payments are going to be. Then I want a fixed rate to pay for it.

There are millions of Americans who bought their homes with an adjustable rate mortgage, and they no longer own those homes. They were foreclosed on by the banks. Right now, Congress and the White House are willing to do an adjustable rate mortgage to buy this health plan. So if this health care plan goes bust, will our country be foreclosed on? I'm just asking, and I don't think I'm comparing apples to oranges.

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