After exiting a meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus, President Obama approached the microphone and proceeded to tell a bald-faced lie about health care reform:

You talk to every health care economist out there, they will tell you that what ever ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to reduce cost for families, businesses, and government, those elements are in this bill.

This statement is 100% false–and Obama knows that. This bill does not contain anywhere near most ideas for controlling health care costs. This bill does not even contain most of the cost-reducing ideas that were part of Obama’s health care plan during last year’s presidential campaign.

What makes his lie so unbelievable is that Obama’s administration is right now fighting against one of the biggest cost control ideas that the president previously claimed to support. His administration is working to kill Dorgan’s drug re-importation amendment.

Dorgan’s drug re-importation amendment, which was previously co-sponsored by Obama, would allow Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada or Europe. The CBO projects that it would save Americans roughly $100 billion dollars on their health care costs over the next decade. It is a very popular, bipartisan, and a common-sense solution to bring down health care costs in this country. It is not in the bill because Obama promised the drug industry he would work to keep drug reimportation out of the bill as part of their secret deal.

Mr. President, If you are going to cut secret deals that will force Americans to spend billions more on their prescription drugs, at least have the decency to not publicly lie about how your “health care reform” bill will do everything it can to reduce costs for American families. You know it is a lie, the PhRMA lobbyists you cut the secret deal with know it is a lie, health care reform experts knows it is a lie, and the American people should know it is a lie.