Grasping for Straws, Obama Touts Savings From Preventitive Medicine

Charles Krauthammer - Preventive Care Isn't the Magic Bullet for Health Care Costs - washingtonpost.com: "Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: 'It saves lives. It also saves money.'

Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: 'Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.'"

The President just keeps on trotting out rationalizations for ObamaCare, and they continue to be refuted by the facts. Savings from electronic medical records were going to pay for the whole thing. Nobody bought that. The Example of Britain's out of control NHS EMR program was brought to the fore. Then, his unaccountable national health board was going to drive savings that paid for the program. The CBO shot that down.

Now he claims prevention will pay for it, and he give wildly inaccurate anecdotal examples like his $30,000 diabetic foot amputation example. The CBO has already shot this one down, too. The President is not a dumb fellow. He could be educated on health care economics if he wanted to be. But of course, this whole program has nothing to do with health care economics, it has to do with wresting away control for 17% of our economy.