I see a few possibilities: 1) It reduces the amount of tax money spent on emergency room bills and therefore it gets spent on something of more widespread use.

I see a few possibilities: 1) It reduces the amount of tax money spent on emergency room bills and therefore it gets spent on something of more widespread use. 2) Future taxes would be smaller as a result. Depending on the timing, this could result in a year of double counting for that money. 3) There will be a later provision for returning the money. 4) The bill is gigantic and maybe this issue hasn't made its way into the news (unless you've studied it in detail. I would suspect not because of its length...). As for your second point, I'm not sure thats true, but I don't have any statistics off hand. It would be interesting to see some comprehensive statistics about how much tax money goes to paying for these things vs. how much money the person makes (adjusted for whatever you want to adjust for).