Dems retreat on health care cost pitch
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41271.html
"Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and the deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it."
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by FamiliesUSA ? one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters, John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg
The Herndon Alliance, which presented the research, is a low-profile group that coordinated liberal messaging in favor of the public option in health care. Its "partners" include health care legislation's heavyweight supporters: AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, Health Care for America Now, MoveOn and La Raza, among many others."
The actual powerpoint is available here:
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM153_pp.html
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The powerpoint, created by an umbrella organization called the Herndon Alliance - which includes left-wing power brokers such as the SEIU, MoveOn, La Raza, and the Center for American Progress - specifically instructs those still trying to sell ObamaCare to the American public to avoid claiming "the law will reduce costs and deficits."
Of course those paying attention already knew that. Even the White House's own Medicare Actuary has acknowledged that ObamaCare will increase, not reduce, the amount the nation spends on health care over the law's first 10 years. Optimistic projections beyond the 10 year window "may be unrealistic," the Actuary stated (pdf).
Not only will the bill raise the amount the nation as a whole spends on health care, it will also raise individual Americans' insurance premiums, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin concurred with that assessment.
Neither will the law reduce the federal deficit. Once one strips away all of the accounting tricks and budgetary gimmicks, one finds, in the words of the former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, "The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion."
Read more:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/lachlan...#ixzz0xd1y4FYU