Obamacare: Haven't We Learned Anything?

In yesterday’s speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama argued that the collapse of General Motors demonstrated the need for his wholesale reform of America’s health care system.

In yesterday’s speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama argued that the collapse of General Motors demonstrated the need for his wholesale reform of America’s health care system.

A big part of what led General Motors and Chrysler into trouble in recent decades were the huge costs they racked up providing health care for their workers; costs that made them less profitable, and less competitive with automakers around the world. If we do not fix our health care system, America may go the way of GM; paying more, getting less, and going broke.

To be fair, the President has only been running General Motors for a few weeks, but he does not seem to have learned the real lesson from GM’s collapse – GM offered extravagant health benefits to its employees, while kicking the can down the road on the financing of these liabilities. With a CBO report showing a $1 trillion price tag to insure 16 million people, critics of the President’s plan might reasonably conclude that the President and congressional Democrats are doing some can-kicking of their own.