Brendan Nyhan questions whether Barack Obama's health care plan "would actually cause a net reduction in government health care spending." Except that Obama doesn't say it would cause a net reduction in government health care spending. In the quote Nyhan offers, Obama says, "I think over the long term we will save money because people will be getting regular checkups, regular screenings." The "we" here refers to what the "we" in health care spending usually refers to: National health care spending.* The amount we as a nation pay out for medical care and coverage. And the answer to whether Obama's plan will save us money? A definitive maybe. First off: Barack Obama's plan is not Jacob Hacker's plan. In the update to his post, Nyhan mentions the Lewin analysis of Jacob Hacker's plan, which shows that Hacker's plan will save about $1.1 trillion over its first decade. But the mechanism for those savings are a rule Hacker places on his group market, which caps per person spending increases at the growth of GDP plus one half of one percent per year. That's a much lower rate of growth then the system currently exhibits, and Hacker is achieving it basically by government fiat -- the government will adjust reimbursement rates in order to meet the spending requirements. In other words, the group market has price controls (for a more in-depth explanation of these controls, and how the two plans differ, see this article). These controls account for approximately $1 trillion of the plan's $1.1 trillion in savings.