Breaking: Obama Says US Out Of Money

Gee, I wonder what his first clue was?

But that doesn't mean the government shouldn't take over the rest of the health care system.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.

Medicare is going to be broke in 2018, so naturally the only sane thing to do is put the government on the hook for even more liabilities. This whole idea that we can't get cost under control unless the government controls every thing presupposes that this is an area where the government has any competency at all. Where exactly is the proof of that?

The only way the government will be able to even pretend to control costs will be by rationing health care. Now if you are about spreading the wealth around, that's a feature, not a bug.

On the upside, Obama says he isn't on board with bailing out California and other states. On the downside, we all know that everything he says comes with an expiration date.

posted by DrewM. at 01:13 PM

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