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A post by Maynard

Flashback: Here’s how they sold Social Security. The lies are a matter of historical record. It’s right on the government site. This is what people told they would get, and how much it would cost them:

After the first 3 year — that is to say, beginning in 1940 — you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. This will be the tax for 3 years, and then, beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. After that, you and your employer will each pay half a cent more for 3 years, and finally, beginning in 1949, twelve years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay.

Wow, that’s a sweet deal! I’d be a fool not to sign onto that! Who could possibly disagree? What could possibly go wrong? Government is wonderful!

(For further comments about Social Security, see my earlier post, “The Myth of Social Security”.)

They say whatever they need to say to sell the program. Once it starts up, it becomes an ever-growing unkillable Frankenstein monster. You’re stuck until you die or the system collapses, whichever comes first.

Do I have to note that anyone in the private sector who sold a plan like the government sells its plans would be in jail?

Here we go again. From the Economist analysis:

The biggest problems with this imperfect bill arise from cost. It does too little to tame health inflation, as Douglas Elmendorf, head of the CBO, hinted this week. And the bill is likely to cost far more than currently advertised, because of two wheezes. One is a lethargic implementation plan, which means that the full annual cost will not kick in for a few years yet (thus making the CBO’s mandatory ten-year cost estimate misleadingly low). The second is the assumption of heroic cost savings from Medicare and big cuts in payments. Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, scoffs that “this legislation is an example of the triumph of budgeting hope over experience.”

It’s a crucial point that the big costs start to ramp up years down the road. So the sales pitch of affordability (a mere trillion dollars) is based on a limited timeframe. The payment schedule will therefore be manageable in the early days, but then we get to the upward spiral of the cost curve. Sort of like those balloon mortgages that bankrupted so many people. Their benign projection doesn’t include the balloon.

It’s also important to remember that Medicare, like Social Security, is already on a path to insolvency. So any savings that can be wrung out of Medicare should be done to save Medicare itself.

Obama knows these things. He lies, and he doesn’t care, and too few people seem to realize what’s going down. The Left knows that once they get the structure in place, there’s no going back.

Hey, are any Republican or Blue Dog representatives reading this? How about you stick a “truth in advertising” provision into this monstrosity? If (when) the health care reform, in defiance of Obama’s solemn promises, starts adding to the deficit, it automatically scales back or is rescinded. How could anyone argue against that without admitting the plan is a huge fraud and the sales pitch is a pack of lies?