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If there’s one thing we learned about Obamacare is that it was based on empty promises, otherwise known as lies.

Remember “your average premiums will be reduced by $2,500?” “You can keep your doctor?” “You can keep your insurance plan?”

Now comes Medicaid expansion — Proposition 2 on the ballot — an enormous Obamacare entitlement trap. Thirty-three states bought into it, with mounting regrets. Enrollee numbers and program costs were vastly underestimated, so a number of taxes are being raised and budgets are taking a hit.

In Idaho, the campaign’s lies can already be disproved with existing data, even before the Nov. 6 voting date.

- Proponents maintain that there will be no downside whatsoever. Sixty-two thousand adults above the poverty line currently in the “health care gap” would get free insurance. Except now, Milliman Inc., an actuarial firm fired by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, has suddenly revised its estimate to 91,000, a 50-percent jump. This is what every one of the other 33 states has already found out: enrollments wildly exceeded projections.

- How would Idaho’s budget withstand a huge number of enrollees? Not to worry, proponents say. We’ll get $400 million of our taxes back from the federal government. Let’s get it before another state does. Except there is no $400 million pot of money with Idaho’s name sitting in D.C. If we don’t expand Medicaid, taxes paid by us are simply not appropriated — not to us or any other state. That’s how entitlement programs are set up at the federal level.

Don’t cast your vote for another Obamacare deception.

LOUIS F. PERRY

Sandpoint