At the beginning of the week the health industry was all gung-ho to work with the administration to ease to costs of healthcare. Now it looks like they are yelling out “SIKE!”

Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.

Mr. Obama invited health industry leaders to the White House on Monday to trumpet their cost-control commitments. But three days later, confusion swirled in Washington as the companies’ trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country.

After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.

So can we stop the game of make believe and acknowledge that fact that these people really aren’t going to fix the problems themselves? Greed trumps common sense any day of the week. We have seen it in the auto industry, banking and now health care. If we want it fixed then we have to fix it – not them.