Here is a gem of a sentence from a news article on the front page of the New York Times: "Republicans also say they will try to deny money to put Mr. Obama's new health care law into effect, though they have not made clear what they would do to make up the cost savings that would be lost if they succeeded in repealing the law."
Only under the strange logic of Washington do you have to "make up the cost savings" when you decide not to spend money on something.
President Obama and the Congressional Budget Office claim that extending subsidized health insurance and prescription drug coverage to tens of millions more Americans will create "cost savings" over a 10 year period. That assumption is unproven and is contradicted by Massachusetts's expensive RomneyCare experiment, by assessments by the Medicare actuary, and by Congress's heaping on "doc fix" after "doc fix." Yet now the assumption seems to be taken for granted not questioned in the New York Times news coverage of the Republican takeover.
Democrats (and even some Republican dissenters) like to mock Republican predictions that tax cuts will raise government revenue as voodoo economics. Yet when it comes to the claim that extending government-subsidized health insurance and drug coverage to tens of millions of people will create "cost savings," the Times offers not even a scintilla of skepticism.
