But let’s assume the numbers are real. This is still insane. Remember, until a few months ago, President Barack Obama insisted on passing health care legislation this year (during the economic crisis we are still in) because it would lower overall costs — a necessary step for a return to a healthy economy.

But neither he nor Congress could design a bill that saved money. So they are settling for not adding to the “unsustainable” current deficit.

Here’s a thought: As shrinking the unsustainable deficit is a critical prerequisite for a healthy economy, why not just enact the $400 billion of Medicare cuts and $400 billion of health insurance tax increases — thereby reducing the 10-year deficit by about $1 trillion (when you count reduced interest payments) — but don’t provide the new entitlement benefits that were the purpose of the bill?

Helping out the uninsured might be a nice notion someday. But the first priority now is to avoid permanently destroying our economic capacity — as we rapidly are doing — by the insanity of adding to entitlement programs while the dollar begins to fail and the CBO predicts we never will recover from the current debt and deficit levels. So cut the 10-year deficit by that almost $1 trillion.