The Cost of Health Care 'Reform' to Virginians

The Virginia Institute for Public Policy released a new study today on the effects of proposed health care reforms on families in the Old Dominion. Produced by a team of economists that includes Arthur Laffer, the study is entitled "The Prognosis for National Health Insurance: A Virginia Perspective."

Among its conclusions are these bullet-points, from a news release released at a press conference in Richmond:

-- Funding health-care reform based on President Obama's priorities will [cost] $4,176 for every person in Virginia. This comes to $32.4 billion in total costs that Virginians will have to bear.

-- In addition to federally-funded expenditures, Virginia government expenditures through 2019 that will occur as a result of federal health-care reform is $2.1 billion, or a $275 bill for every person in Virginia.

-- Virginia would see reduced economic growth in 2019 by 4.5 percent.

-- If the federal government pushes the financial responsibility for covering the expansion of lower-income individual's health-insurance coverage off to the states, Virginia's costs will increase by a total of $6.8 billion, while the federal costs will decline.

While the full study is 44 pages long, a four-page executive summary is available on the Virginia Institute's web site.

I was able to capture the entire news conference today, divided up per YouTube's rules into six unequal parts.

In Part I, John Taylor of the Virginia Institute opens the news conference and introduces the participants, economist Donna Arduin of Arduin, Laffer & Moore Econometrics and U.S. Representative J. Randy Forbes (R-VA4).

Part II features the remarks of Donna Arduin, one of the study's three co-authors:

Congressman Forbes talks about the politics of health care reform on Capitol Hill in Parts III and IV:

Donna Arduin and Randy Forbes take questions from the audience in Part V and Part VI:

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