Health care reform an ill

Health care reform as he knows it having fallen deathly ill, President Barack Obama rushed (STAT!) to the White House briefing room Wednesday, donning rhetorical mask and gown, scrubbing truth like a foul germ from his hands and flicking on the Teleprompter for a rescue operation in prime time. The patient’s condition is unchanged, something Obama can scarcely believe.

Since his ascension in January, the president, who once joked about references to himself as the messiah, has taken on more titles than a studio wrestler. He is The Stimulator, King of Cars, Sultan of Finances, Beacon to Bad Borrowers, The Great Hope, The One and Etc., Etc. Six months of this has unveiled limits, not to Big Media’s credulity (Sasha Obama, the president’s 8-year-old daughter, asks tougher questions) but to the public’s.

Polls turning against him on the subject of health care and spending, Obama sought healing by way of prime-time presser but found wanting his ordinarily extraordinary power to persuade. Tossed fat softballs by his proselytes in the networks, Obama droned, finding that absent public exaltation he could provide it for himself, only not so convincingly.

He started by declaring, “I took office amid the worst recession in half-a-century. ... As a result of actions we took in those first few weeks, we’ve been able to pull our economy from the brink.” Hahaha. The president was kidding, right? The unemployment rate grew from 7.2 percent in January to 9.5 percent last month. The ranks of unemployed swelled from 11 million to almost 15 million. Obama’s stimulus plan is a Shakespearean comedy, funny and sad all at once.

Later, after twice mentioning that he “inherited” a $1.3-trillion deficit, the president congratulated himself for this: “ ... [I]f you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in your budget, you’d have a $9.3-trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we’ve made, it’s going to be $7.1 trillion.” Hooray! The deficit will only be $7.1 trillion, almost seven times what it is now. Victory!

Of course, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office disputes this, pegging the projected 10-year deficit at $9.1 trillion. CBO boss Douglas Elmendorf, the dickens, also told Congress that, contrary to The Stimulator’s assertions, the presidents health-care reform package would keep federal health care spending soaring at an unsustainable pace, to the point of bankrupting the government.

What? Didn’t Elmendorf hear the president? “I’ve also pledged that health-insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”

Well, then, that settles it. If The Great Hope says it, who is a highly respected nonpartisan agency established to provide reliable data on government spending to disagree? That’s surely the question Obama put to Elmendorf when he recently called the CBO chief into the White House for a friendly discussion about toeing lines.

Obama’s public rhetoric and private muscling cannot change what his government takeover of health care is. It’s a cancer that would accelerate to light speed government’s race to financial ruin. It deserves to die. Plunge a dagger in it, shoot it in the head, hang it, smother it, kill it somehow. America cannot survive forever the president’s attempts to save her.