The coming health care crash

DeRoy Murdock:

Just five weeks since the president of the United States signed Obamacare into law, it already resembles an overweight airplane lumbering down the tarmac, poised to crash and burn soon after takeoff. Obamacare's excess cargo of broken promises threatens such a catastrophe.

"The plan I'm announcing tonight," President Barack Obama promised a joint session of Congress last Sept. 9, "will slow the growth of health-care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government."

Not so fast, warns Medicare's Office of the Actuary. In a devastating, independent, 38-page analysis released on April 22, Chief Actuary Richard Foster forecast, "The growth rate reductions from productivity adjustments are unlikely to be sustainable on a permanent annual basis . . . We show a negligible financial impact over the next 10 years for the other provisions intended to help control future health-care cost growth."

"This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems," says health-policy analyst Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. Foster's study delineates the canyon between Obama's warm words and the chilly disappointment that awaits those who expect Obamacare to do good.

"We will have a health-care plan that actually works for you, reduces spending and costs over the long term," Obama promised at the Oct. 7, 2008 presidential debate, among other appearances.

In fact, Foster calculates, the plan will boost U.S. health spending by $311 billion through 2019, while federal medical outlays will grow "by a net total of $251 billion."

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Murdock has more of Obama's promises that are at war with reality. The more we learn about this monstrosity, the more it will be seen for the big screw up that it is. At that point it will be ripe for repeal.