Health Care BS

The president’s supporters are euphoric today because they think he hit a home run last night. Many actually think it saved the game in the 9th inning. Perhaps, but Jonathan Oberlander over at the Health Affairs Blog provides a reminder that we have been here before:

On September 22, 1993, President Bill Clinton spoke to a joint session of Congress about the imperative of enacting health reform … In the speech’s aftermath, his advisers were euphoric when overnight polling showed that two-thirds of Americans favored health reform.

Oberlander goes on to point out what should be obvious to advocates of government-run health care:

We know from Bill Clinton’s experience that great speeches don’t guarantee enactment of major legislation. The day after Obama’s speech, the same serious hurdles to adopting health reform that existed before the speech remain.

The tallest hurdle is, of course, the sticker shock that Obamacare produces in even the most credulous voters. And, on that point, Obama was not quite as candid as he might have been:

Again and again last night, the president’s numbers didn’t add up … Such fudges reveal a politician who, for whatever reason, feels like he can’t be honest about the real-world costs of expanding health care.

Or, as one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers succinctly put it in response to his breezy acceptance of President Oblarney’s utterly preposterous health care math:

“It’s a paid-for $900 billion over ten years.”

No, Andrew, it’s not; and wishing it won’t make it so.  Moreover, it’s irrelevant so long as costs aren’t contained.

The reason the president fudges the numbers is that the public won’t buy Obamacare if they know what it’s really going to cost.  Like any car salesman peddling an over-priced clunker,  he has to lie.

And O’s whoppers weren’t limited to finance. He told a major stretcher about illegal immigrants and was loudly chastised by Rep. Joe Wilson, who has now been outed by the “news” media as a consumer of (gasp) caffeine.

At any rate, we’ll see if Obamacare goes the way of Hillarycare.