By ERICA WERNER and CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writers Erica Werner And Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writers – Fri Sep 10, 4:09 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama told voters repeatedly during the health care debate that the overhaul legislation would bring down fast-rising health care costs and save them money. Now, he's hemming and hawing on that.

So far, the law he signed earlier this year hasn't had the desired effect. An analysis from Medicare's Office of the Actuary this week said that the nation's health care tab will go up — not down — through 2019 as a result of Obama's sweeping law, though the increase is modest.

Obama offered some caveats when asked in his news conference Friday about the apparent discrepancy between what he promised and what's actually happening so far. On several other topics, too, his rhetoric fell short of a full accounting.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — An occasional look at assertions by public officials and how well they adhere to the facts

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A look at some of the claims at his news conference and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: Said he never expected to extend insurance coverage to an additional 31 million people "for free." He added that "we've made huge progress" if medical inflation could be brought down to the level of overall inflation, or somewhere slightly above that.

THE FACTS: Those claims may be supported in the fine print of the plan he pitched to Congress and a skeptical public months ago. But they were rarely heard back then. "My proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions — families, businesses and the federal government," he declared in March.

Last August he predicted: "The American people are going to be glad that we acted to change an unsustainable system so that more people have coverage, we're bending the cost curve, and we're getting insurance reforms."

On Friday, he conceded: "Bending the cost curve on health care is hard to do." The goal: "Slowly bring down those costs."

The White House contends that although health care costs will rise when most of the changes take hold in 2014 and coverage is extended to the uninsured, costs will go down over the longer term as controls kick in.

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OBAMA: "We took every idea out there about how to reduce or at least slow the costs of health care over time."

THE FACTS: One idea that most experts believe would do the most to control health costs — directly taxing health benefits — was missing in Obama's plan. Opposition from unions and others was too great, and Obama himself had campaigned against the idea.

Some of the major cost controllers that did make it into the law — including a tax on high-value insurance plans — don't start until 2018. That tax was watered down and delayed, and other cost-control approaches also softened after opposition from hospitals and other interest groups.

Health spending already accounts for about 17 percent of the economy and is projected to grow to nearly 20 percent in 2019.

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OBAMA: "So these policies of cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans, of stripping away regulations that protect consumers, running up a record surplus to a record deficit — those policies finally culminated in the worst financial crisis we've had since the Great Depression."

THE FACTS: The president probably meant the broader economic crisis and not the meltdown of the financial industry when he talked about the "financial crisis." True enough, George W. Bush entered office with a $236 billion budget surplus in 2001, and in January 2009, before Obama was sworn into office, the Congressional Budget Office projected the deficit for the fiscal year 2009 to be $1.2 trillion.

But the surpluses the government foresaw in 2001 were based on a bubble economy that was bound to burst. And the deficit Obama inherited was only partly from Bush's fiscal policies.

Mostly it was a result of a recession that sapped tax revenues, increased the costs of safety net programs and demanded more government spending to stimulate the economy. As recently as 2007, the budget deficit was just $161.5 billion. The current annual deficit is now an estimated $1.5 trillion.

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OBAMA: Asked how he can lecture Afghan President Hamid Karzai about corruption when it's fueled in part by U.S. aid dollars, Obama said: "I've said to my national security team ... Let's be consistent in terms of how we operate across agencies. Let's make sure that our efforts there are not seen as somehow giving a wink and a nod to corruption."

THE FACTS: While acknowledging the situation is messy, Obama seemed to minimize it.

"Are there going to be occasions where we look and see that some of our folks on the ground have made compromises with people who are known to have engaged in corruption?" he asked. "You know, we're reviewing all that constantly and there may be occasions where that happens."

The United States spends more than $100 billion annually in Afghanistan, the world's second-poorest nation and one of the most corrupt. U.S. officials acknowledge that a significant percentage of the U.S. bankroll enriches shady characters even as it may finance worthy projects, or is stolen outright.

The CIA has paid Afghan warlords and power brokers for years, relying on them as informants and as leverage in the country's internal ethnic and tribal squabbles. Intelligence officials say payouts are cheap insurance, but development officials and diplomats say the money supports a culture of bribery.

Obama pledged to keep up pressure on Karzai. The Afghan leader recently intervened to free a presidential aide arrested on suspicion of soliciting a bribe. U.S. investigators played a central role in fingering the aide.

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Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Obama just is so clueless!

obama is going to keep pressure while investigators finger an aide?

what are they doing over there?

Oblowme's gonna finger an aide!!

I work for a doctor (and going to college to get my RN degree) and so far this healthcare reform has done more harm than good... just as I knew it would. Doctors are no longer making any money on patients who have medicare so now alot of doctors are no longer accepting it. What do these patients do? Well we as their primary care physician have to keep calling around until we find a specialist that does take medicare which can involve several phone calls and alot of wasted time on our part. And trust me we don't have time to waste when seeing patients all day long! The patients can change insurance carriers but usually at a greater cost and again most insurance carries for "elderly" aren't covering what they used to! So this means that it will get to the point that elderly may no longer be able to go to the doctor and receive the care they need. So Obama's "death" penalty he has enacted upon the elderly seems to be going as planned.

It was designed by the liberals to exclude the elderly and especially those with pre-existing conditions that make insurance companies frown upon them.

Oblowme is certainly on the side of the insurance companies here.

Yep.

Lots of folks on Medicare are having to use already overcrowded community health care clinics.

It's not unusual to see a 4 hour wait.

Invalid care necessities take weeks to months to get.

Attends, etc. Guess, they'll just have to hold it.

I am actually starting to feel bad for the guy. He is in over his head and he has to rely on idiots to give him policy advice.

They send him out there promising a bunch of nonsense and when it gets proven later to be nonsense he has the dumbfounded look on his face and says " we are on the right track." haha..

I guess everyones story is different. My brother( a doctor) and my doctor would strongly disagree.
Medicare is still covering the basic needs it was meant to and still is one of the most reliable forms of 'insurance' doctors receive payment from.

Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.
Samuel Smiles

Progress is measured in tangible success. Progress is not measured in the hope that one day we might succeed.

BH

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.
Barack Obama

or you will fall off a cliff.. maybe that is progress to certain people..

6 Million dollar word. "If". Thanks, I learned to keep a close eye out for those disclaimers within the sentence.

Unfortunamentally, he ain't walking down the path to better the US.

Community question. Do ya'll see what seems to be Gov. paid shilling to post in forums.

Is the pay good and are there more openings?

if there was a cliff, it wasnt the RIGHT path,,lol

unless you were trying to reach the cliff..

time will tell

And history shall be repeated. You cannot enact a failure of the past and expect it to be the success of today!

Throwing money at a problem does not solve anything.

Go ahead and live in your fantasy world. it must be nice not having to see the BS going on for what it is. This whole health care thing is at the behest of several industries, not the American people's interests! Then again YOU assume Obama and Congress has our best interests in mind.

Why is it you blissfully ignore the crack in the ice under our feet? You do not want to imagine how cold the water below is?

that was my point..

in obamaland it does...

I thought obama was under the impression that throwing money at problems solved everything? He seems to be doing a lot of that!