The St. Louis Post Dispatch continues its descent into maddening mediocrity with a hysterical editorial likening Republicans to Stalin over Obamacare.

To quote that eminent expert on mass deaths,  Josef Stalin,  “When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it’s statistics.”

When politicians come before you this fall denouncing “Obamacare,” when Republican-dominated state legislatures — including Missouri’s — begin opting out of expanding Medicaid,  this is what to ask:

So you’re OK with people suffering needlessly? And you’re OK with killing 17, 000 people a year? Because if you are,  admit it. Don’t hide behind “we can’t afford it.”

The Post cites the CBO, the easily manipulated office that is only allowed to assess the numbers provided it. This is how Democrats were able to employ fuzzy math to get the CBO’s stamp on a plan which claimed to cost under a trillion dollars. It’s also convenient that the Post chooses to ignore additional CBO scoring which detailed how Obamacare absolutely would increase the national debt unless you drain Medicare. But, just as the left demands the CBO score fuzzy math, so too does the Post’s editorial board expect its readership to be stupid enough to buy fuzzy fact.

If the Post was so concerned with Medicare, as they claim in their editorial, then why champion the passage of a law which guts the program?

In his analysis accompanying the recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees,  Richard Foster,  Medicare’s chief actuary,  noted that Medicare payment rates for doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next three years. Under the policies of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,  by 2019 Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. Mr. Foster notes that by the end of the 75-year projection period in the Annual Medicare Trustees Report,  Medicare payment rates will be one-third of what will be paid by private insurance,  and only half of what is paid by Medicaid.

[…]

These draconian cuts in Medicare payments to doctors,  hospitals and other health-care providers that serve America’s seniors were the basis for the Congressional Budget Office’s official “score”—repeatedly cited by the president—that the health-reform legislation would actually reduce the federal deficit. But Mr. Obama never disclosed how that deficit reduction would actually be achieved.

There will be additional cuts under ObamaCare to Medicare Advantage,  the private option to Medicare that close to one-fourth of all seniors have chosen for their coverage under the program because it gives them a better deal. Mr. Foster estimates that 50% of all seniors with Medicare Advantage will lose their plan because of these cuts.

Additionally, the White House scrambled to keep this truth from escaping.

Congressmen like Paul Ryan pushed forward GOP alternatives, the worst among them did more to actually reform health care (as opposed to insurance) than Obamacare, but they were quickly killed by Democrats. These alternatives would have done more to protect Medicare and Medicaid than the progressive plans which claimed to save it while simultaneously planning to gut it so as to obtain a lower score.

The most juvenile—and ironic—portion of the Post’s editorial was the comparison of Republicans to Joseph Stalin.

To quote that eminent expert on mass deaths,  Josef Stalin,  “When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it’s statistics.”

[…]

So you’re OK with people suffering needlessly? And you’re OK with killing 17, 000 people a year? Because if you are,  admit it. Don’t hide behind “we can’t afford it.”

Sure,  that’s a viable position. Darwinian,  but viable.

“Decrease the surplus population” is Scrooge-like,  but viable. If you’d rather not raise taxes on the fortunate and on health care freeloaders,  that’s a viable position. If you want to continue to allow people to be sick and to die needlessly,  that’s a viable position.

But tell us face-to-face. Tell us they have to die because you just flat don’t care.

Yes, the Post’s editorial staff basically claimed that those who oppose socialized health care are themselves socialists.

This sort of ridiculousness explains the paper’s subscriber hemorrhage and massive circulation dive.