In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”

In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year…

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Robert J. Samuelson has a hard-hitting column in today’s Washington Post on the non-reform elements of the health care reform package.  He points out the inherent contradictions in the Administration’s claims that health care can both be expanded to cover the uninsured and reduce costs.  As the Congressional Budget Office noted in its devastating assessment, the proposals don’t represent fundamental changes and won’t reduce future health spending.

Samuelson says that in the president’s advocacy for the Democrats’ health care proposal, Obama has demonstrated…

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Good stuff from Joseph Lawler at the American Spectator, defending Robert Samuelson from, err, Robert Samuelson. He concludes:

No reasonable observer of government activity would believe that it would engage in temporary interventionism. We saw this play out with the bailout: they asked for the power to do implement one very specificly defined measure, and ended up doing whatever they wanted. Why trust those same characters with any more policy tools, and why think they wouldn’t let the inflation genie out…

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