Morning Bell: Is Government Run Health Care Inevitable?

Conn Carroll / October 28, 2009

Americans who like making their own health care choices received welcome news yesterday when Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he would be willing to block final passage of Obamacare if the government run health insurance program Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced Monday survives the amendment process during the Senate debate. Lieberman explained: “I think that a lot of people may think that the public option is free. It’s not. It’s going to cost the taxpayers and people that have health insurance now, and if it doesn’t, it’s going to add terribly to our national debt.”

Lieberman is dead on. A government run insurance company will be massively more expensive than its proponents claim. Pressed by the leftist news organization Talking Points Memo to respond to “experts” who say the government run plan will actually save money, Lieberman responded: “Well all the history we have of health entitlement programs, including the two big ones that I dearly support, Medicare and Medicaid, is that they end up costing more than we’re prepared to pay, and they add to the debt, and then they add to the burden on taxpayers.” Again, the facts back Lieberman up here 100%.

In 1967, the experts predicted that the new Medicare program would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 100. The leftist TPM shot back noting that the government run health company is supposed to be “financed by premiums, and unable to draw on federal funds.” The statement would be comically naive if the stakes weren’t so high. Does the left really expect the American people to believe that the same government that bailed out General Motors, Chrysler, and scores of highly unpopular banks, would not bailout the already-government-run insurance company they fought so hard to create? (more…)