We can chalk up Fox News regular Art Laffer as another in the “We can’t have EVERYONE getting health care!” camp along with Fox’s Dr. Marc Siegel. Laffer told a friendly, unquestioning Stuart Varney, that the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) would cause people to “over consume” their health benefits and “have everyone gaming the system.”
On yesterday’s Your World, Varney and Laffer discussed the November 30th deadline to fix the Affordable Care Act website. Varney said we’re “stuck with a turkey” in describing the website. Laffer said,
Picking on one thing like the November 30th deadline is sort of like saying, ‘But what else is wrong with Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto?’ You know this is a turkey, and …it’s got so many problems, Stuart, that, you know, picking on this one, that one or the other one, it’s an untenable program that has to be repealed. …It can’t make it. You can’t give away very valuable resources for free, and expect the system to be solvent.
…It’s going to keep on getting worse and worse and worse and worse as we go on until you recognize, you know, you really can’t have a program where you give away health care benefits for free and then expect people not to over consume them, not to have everyone gaming the system.
Varney sneered, “I’ve been using some very rough numbers and those rough numbers are as follows: Approximately 80-100 million Americans will pay more for their health care and that 80-100 million people will be paying for 40-50 million people who get it for free or with a big subsidy. …It’s an income and a wealth transfer scheme masquerading as a health care plan.”
The White House Council of Economic Advisors would probably beg to differ. They just released a new report finding as Think Progress put it, "U.S. health care spending since 2010 has increased by just 1.3 percent — the smallest cost growth over a three-year period in American history — while prices in the health care sector rose by 50-year lows, thanks in part to structural changes made by the Affordable Care Act."
Laffer, not surprisingly agreed wholeheartedly with Varney. "Exactly," he said. “…You can’t do that without prices going way up everywhere. …You can’t fix this turkey.” They both laughed.
Only on Fox News would health insurance be presented as a privilege that should be restricted.
In this Thanksgiving lovefest between Varney and Laffer, they were the ones who looked like turkeys.