Academic

MEGAN MCARDLE: Obama?s Magical Mystery Tour of Health Care Savings. This weekend, I was on a pan?

By Glenn Reynolds

MEGAN MCARDLE: Obama’s Magical Mystery Tour of Health Care Savings.

This weekend, I was on a panel where the other economics journalist and I spent a great deal of time belaboring the obvious: Obama’s health care plans are very, very expensive, and they mean higher taxes for everyone, not just that elusive klatch of greedy fools who are not in the 95% of working families now allegedly slated for stable or lower taxes. Otherwise, how could Obama hope to pay for it?

I think we found out today: magic!

Try to understand: He’s a magic man, mama. Or maybe not: “This is all very well as political theater; politicians convene never-never working groups all the time. But, being perhaps too cynical, I suspect that the announced plan to save $2 trillion is going to be used to sell Obama’s healthcare plan as if we’d already found it. Then when oh, darn, the SEIU doesn’t agree to hold down wages or eliminate jobs, and pharma ratchets up the average price it charges the private sector to make sure it doesn’t lose too much on its mandatory Medicaid discounts, etc, well, we’ll all just have to dig into our pockets to pay for it, won’t we?” Or run ‘em out of town on a rail, whatever.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 12, 2009 (boomark / email).