Obama's 'Public' Health Plan will Bankrupt the Nation

By: Larry Kudlow

Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least.
So let’s be serious when evaluating President Obama’s goal of universal health care, and the idea that it’s a cost-cutter. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Costs are going to explode.
Think of it: Can anyone name a federal program that ever cut costs for anything? Let’s not forget that the existing Medicare system is roughly $80 trillion in the hole.

And does anybody believe Obama’s new “public” health-insurance plan isn’t really a bridge to single-payer government-run health care? And does anyone think this plan won’t produce a government gatekeeper that will allocate health services and control prices and therefore crowd-out the private-insurance doctor/hospital system?

Federal boards are going to decide what’s good for you and me. And what’s not good for you and me. These boards will drive a wedge between doctors and patients.

The president, in his New York Times Magazine interview with David Leonhardt, said his elderly mother should not (in theory) have had a hip-replacement operation. Yes, Obama would have fought for that operation for his mother’s sake. But a federal board of so-called experts would have told the rest of us, “No way.”

And then there’s the charade of all those private health providers visiting the White House and promising $2 trillion in savings. Utter nonsense.
And even if you put aside the demerits of a government-run health system, Obama’s health-care “funding” plans are completely falling apart. Not only will Obama’s health program cost at least twice as much as his $650 billion estimate, but his original plan to fund the program by auctioning off carbon-emissions warrants (through the misbegotten cap-and-trade system) has fallen through. In an attempt to buy off hundreds of energy, industrial, and other companies, the White House is now going to give away those carbon-cap-emissions trading warrants. So all those revenues are out the window. Fictitious.

Anyway, the cap-and-tax system won’t pass Congress. The science is wrong. The economics are root-canal austerity -- Malthusian limits to growth. And there are too many oil and coal senators who will vote against it.

All of this is why the national-health-care debate is so outrageous. At some point we have to get serious about solving Medicare by limiting middle-class benefits and funding the program properly. There is no other way out. We can grow our way out of the Social Security deficit if we pursue pro-growth policies that maintain low tax and inflation rates. Prospects for that don’t look any too good right now, though it could be done. But government health care is nothing but a massive, unfunded, middle-class entitlement problem. (Many poor are already on Medicaid.)

Continued...