At last night’s All Star game, President Barack Obama told Joe Buck that the federal government couldn’t bailout the National League because “we’re out of money.” This is not the first time Obama has used that phrase. He told CSPAN the same thing on May 23rd. And yet earlier today, President Obama praised the House Democrats’ health care bill which creates $1.3 trillion in new entitlement spending in just the first ten years. Perhaps Obama needs a little refresher on the principles of finance:

From the vid:

Steve Martin: I think I got it. I buy something I want and then hope I can pay for it, right?

Rob Parnell: No. You make sure you have money, THEN you buy it.

President Obama has repeatedly assured Americans he would pay for expanding health care coverage by reducing health care costs. So far, he has failed to identify any credible plan to do so. And as CATO’s Michael Tanner and Chris Edwards point out, the government has a history of underestimating health care costs:

A further concern is that initial cost estimates of federal health programs are usually very optimistic. When Medicare was launched in 1965, Part A was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990, but ended up costing $67 billion. When Medicaid’s special hospitals subsidy was added in 1987, it was supposed to cost $100 million annually, but it already cost $11 billion by 1992. When Medicare’s home care benefit was added in 1988, it was projected to cost $4 billion in 1993, but ended up costing $10 billion. Or consider that when Massachusetts Commonwealth Care was put into place in 2006, it was expected to cost about $725 million annually, but the expected cost for 2009 is now almost $1 billion.