Let's recall three of the oft-repeated pledges upon which Obamacare was sold: (1) Lower premiums. False. (2) "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan." False. (3) The law will bend the cost curve down, reforming the "unsustainable" status quo. For the second time since passsage, false:
A new government actuarial study finds that as a result of the law, health care spending will be $478 billion higher over the next decade than it would have otherwise been had no law been passed. Furthermore, as a result of the health care law, about 50 cents of every dollar of health care spending in the United States will be financed by government by 2021, according to the report from the actuary’s office at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, unveiled today in the journal Health Affairs.
One of every two dollars spent on American healthcare will be financed by the federal government thanks to Obamacare, yet calling the legislation a "government takeover" was Politifact's "lie of the year" in 2010. Go figure. The Examiner's Phil Klein preemptively fires back at the Obamacare supporters who are beginning to engage in some major league goalpost shifting:
Though it’s true the report does say that the law would cover 30 million more Americans, while adding 0.1 percent to average annual health care spending growth, judging the reform a success on this basis would be moving the goal posts that Obama set when he embarked on his health care crusade. “(T)he status quo is unsustainable,” Obama declared in a June 2009 speech to the American Medical Association. Yet under the law he championed, spending over the next decade is expected to actually exceed the status quo he viewed as unsustainable. In the same AMA speech, Obama warned that, “If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade.” Yet the CMS report predicts that “health care spending as a percentage of GDP is projected to rise from 17.9 percent in 2010 to 19.6 percent by 2021” – in other words, roughly one in five dollars.
Obama's f-f-frightening "one out of every five dollars" admonition in 2009 seems pretty ironic now, doesn't it? Also, pay special attention to that sentence about Obama's definition of "unsustainability." Obama promised that his healthcare law would cover millions of more citizens, while alleviating "unsustainable" -- literally, cannot be sustained -- costs to the country and families, while also reducing the deficit (tack on another glaring "false"). Batting one for four just isn't acceptable when you've promised the country virtual perfection in exchange for $2 Trillion in spending we can't afford. Phil also points out that these projections assume that every single (double-counted) dollar of "savings" cut out of Medicare to finance Obamacare will actually come to fruition. If Congress reverses itself on some of these slashes, or if coverage costs increase more than expected, the overall price tag and cost curve will rise commensurately. With numerous Obamacare promises lying in tatters, several major private insurers are volunteering to maintain some politically popular provisions of Obamacare if it's struck down or repealed. Let's ditch the whole beast and focus on putting America back to work. What does Obamacare have to do with jobs, you ask? Not only did the CBO estimate that the law itself directly cost 800,000 American jobs, 72 percent of small business owners also say it's an impediment to hiring -- to say nothing of the tens of millions who stand to lose their current coverage. Over to you, Romney campaign: