Charles C.W. Cooke, in the process of pointing out that Obamacare was sold to us as a money-saver – and that the Left is now apparently stupid enough to think that we’re stupid enough not to have noticed – writes:
[Barack Obama’s] central claim [in 2008] — that premiums would drop for the typical family by $2,500 — could literally have been taken from the back of an envelope. As the New York Times explained back in 2008, the $2,500 number came from economist David Cutler, who predicted that Obamacare would reduce all health-care spending by $200 billion a year. Candidate Obama, looking for a good sound bite, simply divided this number by the number of families in the United States; then, calculating inexplicably that total health-care spending and family health-insurance premiums were exactly the same thing, he concluded that all money saved would be returned to the people. That Obama considered this a reasonable way of selling a plan that reorganized one-sixth of the economy betrays either a fundamental economic illiteracy or a deeply troubling readiness to mislead.
Two things:
- Apparently, math is hard for Democratic politicians.
- There is absolutely nothing stopping Barack Obama from being both an economic illiterate and somebody happy to readily mislead the American people. Nothing at all.
Read, as they say, the whole thing.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
And The Middle Class!
Math is not hard for Democrat politicians .. they just don’t bother to do any math that doesn’t involve cash going into their campaign fund or wallet.
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Mew
Thank God he invented the word AND or else I’d still be trying to figure out which I thought applied to Barack Obama more.
Obamacare may save older workers money in the exchanges in that older workers use 6 times as much medical services as younger workers but their premiums can be no more than 3 times higher. Just another transfer of wealth between the generations.
It use to be “The Youth Are Our Future”; now it is “Screw the Youth… They Have No Future”. This is short sighted given that they will never have enough money to bribe the politicians at the rate they are going.