WSJ: The Cost-Control Illusion

The WSJ explains how the democrats are lying about cost control, and that in fact Obamacare will destroy health care as we know it (this goes along with my discussions with doctors who say many will leave the profession because they will no longer be able to make money):

Above all other reasons, voters who oppose ObamaCare cite their fear over costs: They think it will cause their insurance premiums to soar and result in far higher taxes to fund a vast new entitlement. The public is right on both counts, which is why White House smokejumpers have been dispatched to put out this fire as the final votes approach.

Here are the reasons (I've taken snippets from the article to make a list:

• If this new entitlement actually "saves" money, it will be the first in history.
  
• When you subsidize something, you get more of it, which means higher demand for insurance and health-care services. Combine this with new mandates that have raised costs in every state where they have been tried, and you will get higher premiums.
  
• The Cadillac tax. This is the 40% excise tax on high-cost insurance plans that the White House proposed because it lacked the political will to directly reduce the $250 billion annual tax subsidy for employer-based insurance. ... Not to worry, says Mr. Orszag, the tax would still create a "gradually increasing incentive to seek higher-quality and lower-cost health plans." In other words, some future Congress will impose the pain Democrats refuse to impose today.
  
• About the "Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program," CBO says it will cut spending by $0 over 10 years
  
• The "National Pilot Program on Payment Bundling"? Also $0.
  
• But let's say Congress does cede power to this unelected group of wise men. The commission will then function much like similar bodies do in Europe—controlling costs by denying coverage for new technologies or patients at the end of life, or by limiting spending on certain treatments and thus creating longer waits.
  

They summarize:

ObamaCare's real cost-control plan boils down to this: First subsidize coverage so much that costs explode, raise taxes as much as possible to pay for it, and when that isn't enough hand power to an unelected committee to limit treatment and control prices by government order. This is what Democrats are voting for.

Actually, democrats are just voting to try to save their political behinds, in the hopes that their liberal puppeteers will turn out to re-elect them if they just take over the health care of this country.

A revolution is coming. If the democrats are stupid enough to defy the will of the people, and to violate the basic tenets of our legal process to cram through the takeover of our health care, there will be a backlash. Many states have already said they won't go along with it -- but the feds have the power, and they have the military to force the states into compliance.

Three decades ago, one or two states tried to take away the rights of some citizens to equal access to government services, and the federal government had to intervene to protect the rights of those citizens.

Today, it is likely that the federal government will use force against states who are trying to protect the rights of their citizens to associate with companies they wish to associate with, and to spend their money for their own health care in the way they see fit.

Obamacare will enslave us to insurance companies. It will enslave doctors to medical care. It will enrich the political class, kill our old and infirmed, and destroy the best health care in the world. Not only will we suffer, but the world will suffer as our companies, which are at the forefront of the fight for health in this world, are destroyed by marxists who know nothing about how the real world works, and have lived their lives by leeching off the success of others.

The destruction of civilization has begun. We have elected a majority who believes that money grows on trees, that the unproductive deserve the product of the hands of the productive, that the successful exist only to service the unsuccessful, and that they can get anything they want from the golden goose.

They have forgotten that a dead goose lays no eggs. Their brand of socialism will only work until they have taken all the money from those who have it. Then we will be done.

This is what happens when the object of an election is to "make history" rather than "find the best people to lead the country". We sure made history. Now we'll be stuck with the consequences.