Sheriff Taylor's health pitch sparks cardiac arrest

Charles Hurt - Inside Washington

WASHINGTON -- Was it not enough for President Obama to saddle future Americans with billions of dollars in new health benefits and entitlements that they simply cannot afford?

He also had to go and corrupt one of America's most beloved figures of the last half-century. And stick you with the $700,000 bill.

Before Obama started pimping him out last week to sell the highly unpopular health-care law, actor Andy Griffith was about as all-American as you could get.

Grew up during the Great Depression.

Award-winning gospel singer.

As widower Sheriff Andy Taylor, he was thoughtful, big-hearted and always gently right.

As Matlock, he always won his cases.

Yet in a sick deal with the Obama administration, Griffith shatters his credibility, promising all roses with a health-care law that even Barney Fife could tell you is a disaster in the making.

"This year, like always, we'll have our guaranteed benefits," Griffith says in the gauzy ad, as if today's seniors are America's last generation.

"And with the new health-care law, more good things are coming. Free checkups, lower prescription costs. and better ways to protect us and Medicare from fraud."

Yeah, as if the real problem with today's economy is that people aren't paying enough in taxes and the government has too much money on its hands.

Guess it is good to know that at least Andy Griffith is still in Mayberry.

But the 59 percent of voters who want the law repealed live far from Mayberry, no matter what Griffith tries telling them.

And the most shocking thing about the fantasy ad?

You paid for it.

That's right. It is taxpayers who are coughing up the $700,000 to run the ad all over the country in a government campaign to sell its cockeyed health-care scheme.

churt@nypost.com