It’s amazing the type of BS that this administration has tried peddling. This morning, it’s OMB Director Peter Orszag’s turn to get fisked. Here’s the fantasy that he’s peddling:

The Journal makes three fundamental claims. The first is that health reform represents a huge risk to the federal budget, and will end up exploding the deficit, because it relies on an array of speculative policies to control costs.

What the Journal misses is the crucial difference between this health reform effort and the flawed supply-side economics that drove the country into the deep deficits of the 1980s: we are insisting that the legislation be deficit neutral as scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in addition to including a variety of delivery system reform and other cost-containment measures for the long term. In other words, unlike supply-siders, we are not waiting for magic savings to appear. Instead, we are relying on hard, scoreable savings, not the long-term cost-control measures, to pay for the expansion of health care coverage. This “belt and suspenders” approach provides a crucial fiscal backstop, and it’s the prudent, realistic, and wise thing to do. (Note to the Journal ed board: here’s the link to the CBO score of the Senate legislation, in case you’d like to read it.)

People aren’t that gullible, Mr. Orszag. We’ve seen how the CBO scoring is manipulated. We’ve read about how the taxes are collected for 10 years but the expenditures are only paid out for 6 years.

I’d further add that it isn’t wise to brag about deficit neutrality. Increasing taxes by $400,000,000,000 and cutting Medicare by $460,000,000,000 will cause the CBO to score it as reducing the deficit but that doesn’t mean the legislation isn’t expensive.

Here’s another gem from Mr. Orszag:

Which brings us to the Journal’s second argument: that Congress lacks the stomach for serious cost control or always undoes the savings later. This is an interesting argument for a newspaper like the Journal to make, when its closest allies on Capitol Hill spent the better part of last week opposing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare savings. Moreover, it is fundamentally an argument for hopelessness and inaction in the face of our nation’s most serious long-term fiscal challenge: If Congress is institutionally incapable of ever reducing the rate of health cost growth because projected savings are always undone by future Congresses, why even try in the first place?

As usual, Mr. Orszag, just like everyone in President Obama’s administration, thinks that government is the solution. Mr. Orszag reflexively thinks that the people, including medical professionals, economists and policy experts, can’t figure out how to reform health care.

That’s arrogance, which is typical of this administration.

The reality is that there are lots of people living beyong the Beltway that know how to improve health care. We know that people who have high deductible policies are great health care shoppers because it’s their money that they’re spending. We know that HSAs, paid for with pre-tax dollars, are a great way to set money aside to pay for the deductibles of a catastrophic policy.

The other benefits to having this type of health care coverage is that health care can’t be rationed and it’s totally portable. Think of how liberating that is. The person isn’t tied to a company for his/her health care benefits. Also, smart businesses likely will match an employee’s contributions to an HSA. Thus, the employee pays less for maintaining a healthy balance in their HSA, the company doesn’t pay alot out for health care and the policy is portable.

Another dirty little secret about this type of policy is that employers that don’t have to pay out megadollars on health care can pay their employees more in wages.

This isn’t to suggest that HSAs are THE SILVER BULLET ANSWER to the health care crisis but it’s certainly an important part of the solution.

Eliminating wasteful mandates will lower the cost of an insurance premium, too. A friend of mine living in Massachusetts told me recently that every insurance policy purchased in Massachusetts must include coverage for in vitro fertilization. The cost to Massachusetts residents is expensive, adding hundreds of extra dollars to the cost of their insurance premiums.

We are not setting out a plan with every detail laid out for what the health care system of the future should look like. Thinking that we could lay out in full detail a perfect system today would show a foolish disregard for the dynamism of the health care sector, and of the American economy in general.

Mr. Orszag is right. It would be arrogant to think that a bureaucrat, even one as exalted as Mr. Orszag, is capable of laying out in detail what the health care system of the future should look like. Yet that’s precisely what they’re attempting to do. If the Democrats’ health care legislation is enacted, over 100 new bureaucracies will be created, each with its own turf to micromanage and the authority to micromanage what does or doesn’t get paid for.

This administration is nothing if not the most control freak-minded administration, easily outdistancing the Clinton administration in that respect. It’s time that this administration stopped pretending that they aren’t control freaks. The proof of their control freak nature is rather plentiful.

The bottom line is that continuing on the road we are on will overwhelm our economy and our federal budget. The health care plan being considered in the Senate now is built on the best available knowledge and most promising ideas from across the political spectrum. Critics may fear this change, but what we should fear more is doing nothing.

Nobody’s suggesting that we do nothing. While it’s true that doing nothing is preferred to passing the Democrats’ legislation, that isn’t the same as saying that we shouldn’t do anything. I’d further add that Republicans, including some with experience in the health care industry, have a substantial list of things that should be included in any health care legislation. For Mr. Orszag to suggest otherwise is foolish. It’s also part of the Democrats’ strategy since Day One.

The only way the Democrats will listen to the Republicans’ ideas is if the Senate bill crashes and burns. Even then, I’d doubt that they’d listen to the GOP’s plans because it’d expose them as extremist ideologues who won’t listen to anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Giving that type of publicity, especially during an election year, would be damaging to the Democrats.

Try as he might, Mr. Orszag’s spin just isn’t compelling. He didn’t do a thing that won over the American people, which is what’s preventing the Democrats’ legislation from becoming law.

Technorati: OMB, Peter Orszag, Health Care, Deficit Neutrality, CBO, Tax Increases, Employer Mandates, President Obama, Democrats, HSAs, Free Markets, Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Conservatism, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative