Last week we detailed the absurdity of the Obama administration’s claims that they could control health care costs by ADDING millions of America into government run health care. This Sunday, the New America Foundation’s Maya MacGuineas also attacked Obama’s Health Reform’s Savings Myth:

“Health-care reform is entitlement reform” has become a mantra of the Obama administration. The idea is that Congress can add a massive health-care program this year — covering the uninsured — and use the same measures that pay for the health reform to fix the broader budget problems. If that sounds too good to be true, there’s a reason.

Expanding insurance to cover the 46 million Americans who are uninsured would probably cost more than $100 billion a year — more than the federal government spends on education, training, employment and social services combined. It is an immense undertaking at a time when the budget is under terrible strain. So it’s no surprise that Democrats and the Obama administration do not want to portray it simply as another big entitlement program.

Some argue that universal coverage would decrease costs by expanding the risk pool (bringing healthy young people into the system) and by decreasing emergency room costs, because more people would get care before their illnesses become acute. There’s truth to both, but the savings are vastly outweighed by the costs of treating so many people who today get little or no care. Expanding insurance coverage would increase health-care spending by those who acquire insurance and add to overall health cost inflation.

Read the whole thing.