Will Obamacare cut costs? Yeah, right...

There's a good piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning on the government's history with health care programs, and the unlikeliness of any government program costing what it is projected to cost.

Washington has just run a $1.4 trillion budget deficit for fiscal 2009, even as we are told a new health-care entitlement will reduce red ink by $81 billion over 10 years. To believe that fantastic claim, you have to ignore everything we know about Washington and the history of government health-care programs. [emphasis mine]

It looks at Medicaid (which "now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation") and Medicare (which was projected, in 1965 when passed, to cost $12 billion in 1990. It actually cost $90 billion. "Whoops.").

The lesson here is that spending on nearly all federal benefit programs grow [sic] relentlessly once they are established. This history won't stop Democrats bent on ramming their entitlement into law. But every Member who votes for it is guaranteeing larger deficits and higher taxes far into the future. Count on it.[emphases mine]

This is federal government 101, I know. But there are so many people that either don't understand this that the President and the Democrats feel that they can just lie about it with impunity. Which they're doing.

It must be stopped.