Blatant Lies About Costs

In today's Washington Post there is an article called, "Administration insists health-care reform bills contain costs." It includes such claims as,

White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters via conference call that the $848 billion bill now pending before the Senate contained important cost-cutting tools. AND the Medicare savings in both bills -- about $500 billion under the Senate approach and $400 billion in the House version -- as the first serious effort to restrain the entitlement program's growth since the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.

You have to wonder if they actually expect anyone to believe such blatants lies. Somehow we are supposed to believe that a massive increase in the government's role in health care, all the new bureaucracy, new regulations, and new taxes are going to lower costs. 

John Stossel has an excellent article at Real Clear Politics accurately titled, "We Pay Them to Lie to Us." It's a useful counteractive to the  weak propaganda coming from Congress and the White House in support of health care reform. Read the whole article. But here's his response to the supposed cost reductions in Medicare.

Obama has promised to pay for half the "reform" cost by cutting Medicare by half a trillion over 10 years. ... his is an administration that will pay seniors $250 to make up for the fact that they didn't get a Social Security cost-of-living increase this year (because the cost of living didn't increase). And Congress is in the process of repealing a scheduled increase in Medicare premiums."

Stossel goes so far as to say,

I will chew on razor blades when Congress cuts Medicare to keep the deficit from growing.

I don't think his mouth is in any danger. Cutting Medicare is political suicide and everyone knows it. But that doesn't stop politicians from blatantly lying about it.