Something for nothing?

The "Affordable Care Act" implicitly promised to give all Americans low-cost health insurance.  But the reality was (and is) that if people who couldn't afford health insurance before the law was rammed through were either to be given such insurance at no cost to themselves--including those allowed to enroll in "expanded medicare"--or else to be given a government [i.e. taxpayer-paid] subsidy so their out-of-pocket cost was low enough to tempt them to sign up, the money would have to come from somewhere.

Of course few ordinary citizens know enough about how governments get their funds to be able to recognize this.  And virtually no "panhandler voters" would care in any case:  To them the only relevant question was, "Is it free?"

But you'd think at least a few dozen of the Ivy-league-educated elites would have the education to be able to realize that Obamacare was implicitly promising "something for nothing."  Yet not one member of the liberal elite wrote a single word pointing this out.  All the warnings came from the conservative side, which did no good against Democrat control of the media and both houses of congress.

Of course we all heard the glittering buzz-phrases about "bending the cost curve over."  But those who bothered to ask exactly what this meant got no audience beyond conservative circles, while no national reporter bothered to ask.  Whether this was their own sense of self-preservation or literal orders will likely never be known.

So as of now the ACA has racked up six million cancelled policies and seven million have signed up, for a net gain of one million.  But several problems with this record.  First, it's likely that most of the signups had serious pre-existing conditions and will be a net loss to insurers.  Also, the government isn't saying how many "signups" have actually paid their first premium.  If experience with automobile insurance is any guide, a substantial fraction of those will either not pay a dime or will stop paying after a few months.  More losses.

How do the Democrats plan to cover those unexpectedly higher losses?  If history is any guide they'll simply have the government borrow more money.  Which of course increases U.S. interest payments to foreign lenders.

If you think that's trivial you should know that just the *interest* we pay to the Chinese government on U.S. borrowing is almost equal to their annual defense budget--at least the part they admit to.

There was never any way the "Affordable Care Act" could have come within $100 billion dollars a year of being "revenue neutral."  But rather than be honest about the cost of giving health insurance to 30 million uninsured (or whatever the number was claimed to be), Democrats chose to lie--brazenly--claiming the thing would cost just a pittance.  But of course if Americans had known the true cost it's far less likely that the bill would have passed.

The key to passing Obamacare was the claim by Democrat propagandists that it would give people a huge benefit for almost no net cost.  In other words, the implication was that it would give something for next to nothing.

Most adults know that if something looks too good to be true...