How are you paying for all the no-cost stuff again?

Barack Obama: "Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan."
Arnold Kling: "And if we don't pass this plan, does he intend to keep the waste and inefficiency, out of spite?"

This little exchange illustrates a couple of problems with Obama's logic. First, notice the false dichotomy implied by Obama and exposed by Kling's comment. It's implied that the savings and the plan must go together, when nothing actually requires them to. Second, notice the implication his plan costs money, even though he elsewhere claims it doesn't.

It's not a sacrifice or a trade-off if it's something you wouldn't want to do anyway. "I'm going to give up paying someone to poke me in the eye so that I can afford to eat out for lunch" just doesn't have the same compelling sense of sacrifice as "I'm not off buying new shoes so that I can afford to eat out for lunch".

Obama's comment also nicely illustrates how progressives can get away with things that the media will never call them on, when their opponents would be instantly demonized. If a Republican president or congressman had suggested that we should reduce "the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid", most of the press would be reporting this under a headline like, "Obama advocates budget cuts to programs that provide health care to millions of poor and elderly!"

See this Washington Post Story as an example. You'd have quotes in news articles like the actual news quote "... proposed cuts to Medicare would hurt older and disabled Americans and take a wrecking ball to many essential hospitals across the country". That was for a proposal to slow the rate of growth from 7% to 5% by eliminating waste, not even an actual cut.

What you won't hear Obama nor the Democrats talk about is what their plan will cost you in insurance premium increases. Most of the "reforms" in their "exchange" plan have already been implemented in several states. They've driven premiums up in those states. The government cost analysis of the bill won't reflect those costs, since you pay that directly, not indirectly to support the federal budget.