Little did we know that the Commerce Department was engaging in wildly optimistic assumptions when it told us a few weeks ago that GDP in the first quarter of 2014 declined 1.0 percent. We found out yesterday it was much worse than that, with the actual decline totalling 2.9 percent.
Ouch. That was the worst quarter since Obama took office in 2009, and folks, it's not as if Obama's presidency has represented a sustained triumph of healthy growth. It takes a lot for these guys to sink to new depths.
But it makes a lot more sense when they give us the explanation that the downward revision was necessary because they overestimated spending in the health care sector. Of course they did.
Health insurers have been looking for ways to prevent premiums from exploding in the era of ObamaCare, and the only way to do that is to limit access to services. That's why you see networks narrowed and access to services restricted. That's why you see people losing their doctors. It's the only thing insurers can do.
The basic proposition of ObamaCare is absurd - that no one with a pre-existing condition can be turned down or made to pay higher premiums, and that premiums overall should not increase as a result. That is economically impossible, and of course we've all seen by now that it isn't happening that way at all. The only way you can even try to limit premium increases in the face of such an absurd policy is to limit and control usage.
When the administration estimated the overall growth number, they overestimated health care spending because they are still under the delusion that ObamaCare will not have this effect. When they actual numbers started coming in, and they realized what they had actually done . . . gulp.
But don't worry, they assure us. The setback is only temporary! Yeah. Tell us another one. I'm sure they're working on it, which should give no one reason to feel any better.
