From the beginning, the message about health care reform has been a mixed one. On the one hand, Washington has claimed that the reform is all about saving costs. On the other hand, it has wanted to implement the once very liberal notion of universal health care. So the question quickly arises, how can you reduce costs if you are going to pick up the obligations of 30 million new health care customers?

Somehow getting people to believe that by expanding coverage, costs go down is one of the greatest political slight of hands seen in some time. Who is going to pay for those 30 million new customers? You are. Your cost will be the cost of your health care, plus the additional taxes that you will pay to fund the 30 million who are currently uninsured.

Additionally, we should ask the “and then what?” question. And then what happens when you put 30 million additional folks into the health care system? When the demand for health care goes up substantially and there is not an equivalent increase in supply, prices go up, or there is rationing. There is just no way around that. So, it’s inevitable that the price of health care goes up, that there are probable shortages as well AND that your taxes will go up.

It’s a shame that our leaders could not have worked in a bi-partisan way to JUST reduce costs and then, once those savings poured into the federal coffers, use them to expand coverage. That’s the way that most of us run our household budget and our businesses. But that is just too rational – and too much work for our politicians.