Providing health insurance to the 47 million Americans who don't have it -- the key feature of the bills before Congress -- is likely to expand heart attack treatment and increase spending on it, not pare it back and reduce the cost.That from Wash Post article on how expensive health care has become and will continue to be and why thinking that by adding to the number of overweight Americans to be covered you're going to be able to control costs and save money is just profoundly silly - the very point I tried to make a few weeks ago. Health care conjoined to ever improving and expensive technologies and a population that demands better health while engaging in lifestyles not conducive to such is irreducibly and unavoidably inflationary - the only way to manage that dynamic is to ration access and quality or make people pay - but no matter what you do it's gonna cost a shit load of money.
Now, the American system is no doubt flawed and needs to be fixed - but it's an outright lie to pretend that can be done without significant trade-offs and expense - and to try and do so in this economy with budget deficits spiraling out of control may be worse than a lie, it may be delusional. I don't know what worries me more: that Obama is doing this to secure an unassailable democratic voter base - or because he actually believes it's a good idea.