THE SEEDS OF AN INSIGHT:

You Be Obama (DAVID BROOKS, 6/16/09, NY Times)

Let’s say that you are President Obama. You’ve inherited a health care system that is the insane spawn of a team of evil geniuses from an alien power. Pay is divorced from performance. Users are separated from costs. Rising costs threaten to destroy your nation and everything you hold dear.

Because you have a lofty perspective on things, you know there are basically two ways to fix this mess. There is the liberal way, in which the government takes over the health care system and decides who gets what. And then there is the conservative way, in which cost-conscious consumers make choices in the context of a competitive marketplace.

You also know that these two approaches have one thing in common. They are both currently politically unsellable. Others have tried and perished. There are vast (opposing) armies arrayed against them. The whole issue is a nightmare.

Mr. Brooks has obviously stacked the deck here, but the manner in which he describes the genuine problems with the health care system reveals that the solution has nothing to do with what the Democrats are seeking to do. All of the difficulties in health care trace to one key fact: too many people are insured. The Democrats proposal? Insure everyone.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 16, 2009 7:48 AM