Obama spreads untruths about the Graham-Cassidy health bill
by Tom Rogan 
Former president Barack Obama is back in the news, offering a familiar dose of self-righteousness.
Speaking at a Gates foundation event on Wednesday, Obama targeted the Republican Senate bill, Graham-Cassidy. That bill would repeal and replace Obamacare, thus "aggravating" Obama.
As the community organizer turned $400,000-per-speech giver put it, "It may be frustrating that we have to mobilize every couple of months to keep our leaders from inflicting real human suffering on their constituents, but typically that's how progress is won." Obama also claimed that the bill will "Raise costs, reduce coverage and roll back protections for older Americans and people with pre-existing conditions."
This is vintage self-righteousness from the former commander in chief, he cannot see how Republican legislation might be better than his own. But it would be better.
First off, the Graham-Cassidy bill restores some semblance of fiscal sanity to Medicaid. That entitlement program exploded under the Obama administration, as the government shifted millions of Americans onto its rolls, but failed to address its grevious inefficiencies. By transferring federal Medicaid grants to state governors, and allowing them to use that money as they see fit, Graham-Cassidy will promote Medicaid innovation and reform. It will also help to address the growing debt crisis that threatens, as Obama might say, to inflict real human suffering.
But let's expand on that rightful concern of human suffering for a second.
After all, Obama's words proffer a great deal of arrogance in the context of what Obamacare already means for hundreds of millions of Americans. Obama's beneficent law has sent premiums soaring while reducing access to quality care. But it has had anespecially pernicious impact on young Americans by forcing them to unduly subsidize older Americans and buy coverage they don't want or need. Even though it is itself a lie, when Obama claims that Graham-Cassidy would "roll back protections for older Americans," he implicitly admits that young Americans have been pummeled by his landmark law.
Yet the most tedious of Obama's claims yesterday was his assertion that Graham-Cassidy will "raise costs." That assertion does not comport with any objective assessment of the legislation. The math just doesn't work. Consider that one of Graham-Cassidy's central elements is its provision of waivers that would allow states to provide spartan health plans with fewer benefits in return for lower premiums. If you want a more generous plan, you'll simply have to pay more. Regardless, by offering greater flexibility to insurers and consumers, Graham-Cassidy should reduce costs by rebalancing the individual mandate into a personalized supply and demand equation.
Obama might know all this, but as when he used falsehoods to promote Obamacare itself, he doesn't care. Unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, the former president cannot handle his loss of power. And he cannot fathom that those still in government might be able to do things better.
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