Nancy Pelosi Is Selling Snake Oil On Health Care Costs
John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal:
Blue Dogs who are dragged into Speaker Pelosi’s office should be aware of just how she is selling the health care bill. Yesterday, she told supporters it represented “real change,” because it meant “a cap on your [health care] costs, but no cap on your benefit.”
Essentially, what Pelosi is saying is that the Democrat plan for health care can provide you with an unlimited amount of health care “benefit” on a finite budget that’s actually represents less spending then we’re doing on health care now.
Anyone who has ever planned a wedding reception knows differently. Think of it this way: Private health care is a cash bar. Government health care is an open bar. We all know that less booze gets consumed at a cash bar than an open bar, and thus open bars are very, very expensive. But what Pelosi is suggesting is that we can have our health care be an open bar, where people can get all they want and have someone else pay for it, and simultaneously have it cost less overall than a cash bar where people have to pay for what they get.
This is simply not true. Pelosi is either lying in favor of her plan for health care or she’s economically illiterate.
The truth is, if the Democrats actually intend private health care to cost less than private health care, it can’t be an open bar. It’ll be more like the sort of bar where you can drink all you want and you don’t have to pay the bartender, but the bartender gets to pick what you drink. And you have to wait 20 minutes for each drink.
And it costs you $1,000 to get into the reception.
