The president insisted — repeatedly — that his party's health care overhaul would roll back spending. Skeptics, of course, knew better. But we wonder how many realized just how costly the reform would be.

President Obama promised the Democrats' health care legislation would both "bend" the health care cost curve downward and "cut the deficit by a trillion dollars."

Critics said hogwash and pointed out that government programs, particularly signature initiatives, always cost far more than the bureaucracy projects. Despite promises that ObamaCare would be different, it turns out that it won't.

Using the administration's own numbers as well as data provided by the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Budget Committee minority staff announced last week that unfunded obligations that are part of ObamaCare will pad the federal debt by $17 trillion.

According to the analysis, the unfunded obligations of Social Security and all federal health care programs before the legislation was passed and signed was $65 trillion over the next 75 years. Figuring in the costs of ObamaCare boosts that figure to $82 trillion.

Of course the Democrats will try to poison the estimate, saying it's a gross exaggeration by the Budget Committee's minority — in this case Republican — staff.

But we see no attempt to cook the numbers. The model used by the committee staff to arrive at the estimate is based on the model the Office of the Actuary at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Service uses for its own projections.

The short-term outlook of ObamaCare's financials was supposed to be far rosier than what we're seeing. It was projected to cost a mere $940 billion in its first 10 years and actually cut deficits rather than add to them.

Yet less than two years after ObamaCare became law, the CBO revised its projection to $1.76 trillion in costs through fiscal 2022, almost a doubling.

Private costs have increased, too.

At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing less than a month ago, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., recalled that Obama had "said that by enacting this health care law, every family would save $2,500 per year," then pointed out that "the Kaiser Family Foundation has already released a study saying that average costs of family health care plans are up $2,200."

"We're already different by $4,700," Johnson said. "It's going to be hard to get us down to $2,500 cost savings."

There is much more ailing ObamaCare than its invasive individual mandate. It is a financial wreck that will require more tax dollars and private spending than any program in history. It has the potential to inflict severe long-term damage to the U.S. economy.

And for what? Increased health insurance coverage is not the same as better health, nor does wider coverage guarantee lower medical costs.

More government intervention, however, ensures higher costs and declining outcomes. Just ask the British, who are learning this the hard way.

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