A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Jonah Goldberg: “Health-Care Hell”

The time for talk is over.

So proclaimed the most talkative president in modern memory. I can't remember when Barack Obama said that. Maybe it was during the first "final showdown" on health care. Or maybe it was the third. The fifth? It's so hard to tell when pretty much every week since the dawn of the Mesozoic Era, Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid has proclaimed that it is now Go Time for health-care reform.

So you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat skeptical about the possibility that the health-care reform debate is about to come to an end.

That's the tenor of syndicated columnist and best-selling author Jonah Godlberg's latest effort.  He isn't buying the Obama-Pelosi-Reid line that there is no time to pass a bill that WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT UNTIL 2013...conviently, after the next presidential election.

Hmmm.  I wonder why that might be?

This latest gambit is of a piece with the White House's demonization of the health-insurance industry. I have no love for that industry myself, but let's get some perspective. As of August, the health-insurance industry ranked 86th in terms of profit margins -- behind anemic industries such as book publishing (38th) specialty eateries (71st) and home furnishing stores (84th), according to data compiled by Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

Insurance companies account for less than 5 percent of American health-care spending -- less than hospitals (31 percent), doctors (21 percent) and medicine (10 percent). But because health-insurance companies are unpopular, Democrats are beating up on them, even though if Democrats are serious about containing costs, the cuts will have to come from those other slices of the pie.

But enough with the substance.

Goldberg continues:

The health-care debate ceased being about substance a long, long time ago. Fair or not, the Democrats' plan is unpopular, period. There is simply nothing Obama can say that will change that fact before Democrats vote for it. That hasn't stopped him from talking out of every side of his mouth. But outside the Obama bunker, no serious pollster, pundit or pol in Washington disputes this basic point: Obama cannot take the stink off this thing.

The brand of health care "reform" currently being pursued by the most powerful people in our nation's government is unpopular, ineffective, and will spell economic ruin for this nation for a generation (or more).

But it might work for us...