[fhayek]

What was the health care problem? Does anyone remember. There were actually two problems (not totally unrelated). 1) That there were a large number of people (for whatever reason) uninsured. and 2) That health insurance costs were steadily becoming unaffordable. I think if you asked most people what was their concern about health care, and they would have said that the cost was becoming unmanageable. Certainly, businessmen who provided a health benefit would have said this.

During the "health care debate", the dems were insisting that they could solve both problems in one fell swoop. Our biggest criticism of the plan, as conservatives, was that there was no way you could provide more insurance, to more people, without limitations - without increasing its cost. Especially if government was involved. All through this, Barack Obama accused the conservatives of spreading lies and half truths about the plan. Now, today he is saying that everyone knew that you could not cover 30 million more people without increasing its costs.

The thing is, the real problem in the who health care debate was its high cost. That's what families and businesses were fretting about. That's why so so many people are without health insurance. So what was the democrats answer to the health care problem? Make it cost even more!.

The funny thing is, Obama thinks he can set his own benchmarks of success. This is of course emblematic of someone who never had to show any real results in the real world. Health care costs up? Sure, that's the price ya gotta pay to get everyone insured. Unemployment up? It would have been worse without Obama. Iraq a success, despite his opposition to the surge? Just claim credit for the victory. Everything he does is great, everything anyone else does is crap. If you don't believe it, just ask him.

[Question Liberal Authority]

Now, today he is saying that everyone knew that you could not cover 30 million more people without increasing its costs.

Not only that, but today he said there were '30 million uninsured and the number is increasing'. Well, during the Clinton years, they kept saying it was 40 million, and the number Obama used in the campaign was larger than that.

I think the 30 million figure takes out illegal aliens and Obama started bandying it about after the Joe Wilson "you lie" incident. Though I think if you parse the numbers further, there are very few people in America with absolutely no access whatsoever to health care.