FOXNews.com - Obama's Health Care Bill Is Not What He Promised

FOXNews.com - Obama's Health Care Bill Is Not What He Promised: "Would Barack Obama and the Democrats have won in 2008 if he had promised what he ended up doing: to dramatically increase government spending and deficits, raise taxes on the middle class, hide special deals on health care, and make it impossible for people to keep their current doctors and health insurance plans?"

As President Obama prepares to sign the reconciled health care bill into law and sell it to Americans, how does it measure up to what he promised? Unfortunately, the gap is huge, and he can hardly claim a mandate for what is in the final bill.

Start with the cost of the program:

"Obama promised that his plan's $50 billion to $65 billion price tag would be paid for by discontinuing Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year." -- from candidate questionnaire during 2008 presidential campaign.

The $940 billion health care bill just passed by the House is between 45 and 88 percent more expensive than Obama promised during the campaign. And this excludes the additional $208 billion so-called “doc fix,” which restores some of the cuts in Medicare reimbursements written into the bill to doctors. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimates indicate that the law won't be budget neutral -- increasing total deficits by $260 billion over the next 10 years, and this ignores many of the costs of the program. This promise of a smaller government health care program has disappeared the same way as his frequent campaign vow to cut the size of government. "Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut," Obama pledged during the third presidential debate with John McCain.