Rich Lowry writes:
The Obama team is saddled with a foundering health-care strategy. But it has a fallback plan — relying on the sheer dimwitted gullibility of the American public. How stupid do they think we are?
Stupid enough to think that a new $1 trillion health-care entitlement is just the thing to restore the country to fiscal health.
Stupid enough not to know that almost every entitlement known to man has cost more than originally estimated, with a congressional committee in 1967 underestimating by a factor of ten Medicare’s cost by 1990.
Stupid enough not to realize that it is through budget trickery — the taxes begin immediately, the spending is put off for a few years — that the program in the House shows “only” a $239 billion deficit over the first ten years.
Stupid enough not to focus on how the gap between the House plan’s revenue and spending steadily grows after the first ten years, making it a long-term budget buster.
Stupid enough to think increased preventive care will save the government money, just because Pres. Barack Obama constantly repeats it, despite all the independent studies to the contrary.
Stupid enough to believe that a program with no cost controls that can be discerned by the Congressional Budget Office will control costs.
Stupid enough not to worry that Obama’s proposed superteam of technocrats operating outside normal political controls — the so-called Independent Medicare Advisory Council — will resort to rationing when costs continue to spiral upward.
More here.