One thing Obama said in his ginormous health care reform speech stuck in my mind. Without getting into who is lying, or misrepresenting, or generally not playing nice on health care, I can say for certain that the President is WAY off on his math.
At one point he said -- and I know it's accurate because I bipped back the TiVo twice to make sure and asked my wife if he really said it and Jake Tapper heard it too -- that if we can "slow the growth of health care costs by just one-tenth of one percent each year, it will actually reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long term."
Wow, he must be thinking REALLY long-term! Let's solve for X shall we?
One-tenth of one per cent of X equals $4 trillion or
.01 * X = $4,000,000,000,000
X = $400,000,000,000,000
Therefore the amount of growth in healthcare costs is $400 trillion, although we don't know the rate because he provided no time component (how much of what by when). But just accepting his number, it takes a whole lot of per cent of anything to equal a trillion...or four. The growth of healthcare costs is about 8% per year now, so saving $4T might help the deficit, if it were possible.
Somehow, I think those numbers just don't add up. And the fact that no news story on his speech evinced skepticism about his numbers is astounding. But finally, remember when Newt Gingrich said we wanted to "slow the rate of growth for medicare" in the mid-1990s? Dude was hung out to dry. Called a dirtbag and a hater of old folks. Now, of course, as in many other things, when Obama says it the press just nods and says "Great!"
Times change, Baby!
