Don’t believe the predictions that health care reform will be self-financing. Cassidy writes that, “What is really unfolding … is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama administration … is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”
Nor is this effort solely about health care, or a bid to make the United States a “more equitable society.” Cassidy says this is all part of the Democrats’ “political calculus” — meaning, I assume, that if voters are more dependent on government, they will tend to support the party of government, namely the Democrats.
Cassidy believes that “expanding health care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term consequences is an eminently defensible strategy.” It will make American society more “equitable,” and perhaps justifies a little “subterfuge” with the numbers.