We are in the fiscal mess we’re in because again and again our leaders (Republicans and Democrats alike) have failed to find the political courage to fix our entitlement system. That won’t change with this bill. What will change is that the problem will be made much worse, and the means available to fix it in the future will be made fewer and more difficult and costly to employ.This seems to me the one unassailable negative to the health care shite the democrats are pushing through: even if one gives the bill the benefit of the doubt and allows for all the highly improbable rosy scenarios to actually play out as promoted resulting in a 'deficit neutral' end product, you're still left with an expensive new entitlement that does nothing to improve the fiscal mess but rather makes it worse by sucking up tax increases that could have been used for debt reduction. In short, the very best you can say of this thing is it will produce a marginal increase in access to health care, possibly a marginal reduction in insurance premiums, possibly no dramatic change in quality of care but more likely a decline there, all bought at the expense of making it much, much more difficult to tackle the fiscal crisis sitting on the US balance sheet. And that's the best you can say about it - which is why I maintain [although I'm still the only one harping on this which makes me think maybe I've gone a bit silly] that Obama has no intention of running for a second term.
Friday, March 19, 2010
From Yuval Levin over at National Review:
