His comments on the Fox All-Stars last night could be boiled down into this line from Woody Allen’s 1971 movie “Bananas”:
It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
Those were the words of Fielding Mellish, the ubernebbish protagonist of “Bananas.” But here’s Krauthammer’s longer version (scroll down):
Two items here. One of them is the $120 billion assumed of income from what are called “fees” of the big players in health care — the health insurers, the drug companies, the guys who do diagnostics and who produce the medical equipment.
The fee is a tax, and the tax, $120 billion, is going to end up out of your pocket and mine, because every penny of it will be in higher insurance, higher costs for drugs, for stents — any kind of medical devices — and for diagnostics. Everybody will pay.
But it’s hidden. It is a cowardly way to do a tax. You do it on the industry and it is passed on.
Secondly, there are individual mandates. People are going to be shelling out a huge amount every year on insurance, and those who don’t are going to have to pay a fine, also a tax, but under another name.
There are huge costs in here, which are all hidden, and that’s why it looks OK.
And secondly, there is a $400 billion assumption of cuts in Medicare. That is not going to happen. It is an illusion. It is a fantasy. And that’s why the numbers end up OK.
