One billion dollars? No, no, what the hell, make it three billion!

So Cash for Clunkers, originally “budgeted” (and I use that term extremely loosely, we’re talking about Congress here) for $1 billion, is being expanded by 200% to three billion dollars.

Congress has a long, ugly history of severely underestimating the cost of their social engineering programs.

Remember this when your Congresscritter is in front of you telling you how much health care “reform” will cost.

The official Congressional prediction when Medicare passed in 1965 was that the program would cost $9 billion in 1990. The actual bill in 1990 was $66 billion.[*1] Today, it costs even more, and the program circles closer to the drain of insolvency every day.

We can’t afford to have the government involved in delivery of health care.

We.
Can’t.
Afford it.

UPDATE: How about this little fact:[*2]

While listening to a clip of doctor representatives of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, I wasn’t surprised to hear that internal polling of their members revealed that 65 percent of doctors would prefer to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients for free than deal with the government. That’s certainly my perspective.

In fact, in my own office, Medicare and Medicaid are not accepted, but we do affiliate with the free clinics around the county, as do many, many other doctors. Helping people heal is why most doctors go into the business. That the business is also intellectually stimulating and personally rewarding is often secondary.

Why would the majority of doctors prefer not to deal with the government’s health care system?

Yep, costs out of control, and the providers would rather give their services away for free rather than deal with it. More government health care, PLEASE (that’s sarcasm, in case you’re humor-deprived, or a Democrat).