Last year as the debate over health care was raging, I and many others who opposed this massive government power grab accused the President of lying about the supposed cost savings his bill would bring about, and the statists responded with indignation. BO argued in his speech last September that passing Obamacare was critical to reducing the deficit. Surely if BO says that he will reduce the cost of health care, he is going to do it, just as government money will not fund abortion or subsidize people who entered the country illegally. Joe Wilson was soundly chastised for suggesting that the President would lie to us in his effort to ram through Obamacare.
In discussions on this blog, BO fans criticized me for questioning the President's promise that "I will not sign a bill which adds even one dime to the deficit, either now or in the future. Period."
Even then, anyone willing to examine the assumptions behind the claim that Obamacare was deficit neutral would find that it was a pipe dream. It required that hundreds of billions of dollars be cut from Medicare's budget, and that additional reduction of hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse from government spending on health care. Cutting Medicare is a political impossibility. Each year there is a planned Medicare cut, but in nine of the past ten years Congress voted to ignore it. And if finding and eliminating $450 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse is possible, why has it not already been done?
Months ago I posted a challenge to anyone who believes BO's claim that Obamacare will be deficit neutral to "put your money where your mouth is." No one accepted my challenge.
So I was not terribly surprised to hear that the Department of Health and Human Services reported today that Obamacare will not reduce the deficit. It will increase the deficit. After all, this is the President who, in one year, drove the deficit four times higher than ever before. His attempts to posture as a deficit hawk are laughable.
The NY Times article also states that "The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, 'possibly jeopardizing access' to care for seniors." In other words, government tampering with the free market will drive hospitals out of business, just as 35 million more people obtain medical insurance. In fact, sixty hospitals which were in the planning stages have been canceled as a result of the passage of Obamacare. As demand increases and supply decreases, rationing of care will be necessary. BO drones, Sarah Palin awaits your apologies.
So why is this admission, which blows away half of BO's two-pronged argument for his authoritarian scheme, coming to light now? Has anything changed in the month since the House passed the bill and BO signed it into law? Is there any new information not available as recently as March which turns Obamacare from a deficit reducer to a deficit increaser? No, the truth is that all the facts necessary to know with certainty that Obama was breaking his pledge not to sign a bill which added even a dime to the deficit were there in plain sight for the past year. So why is this report being released from Obama's Health and Human Services now? Simple. The bill is law so there is no reason to lie about it any more.
