The Daily Plunge

The president is making the rounds on health care. He’s trying to convince Americans that “something should be done.” What a noble act of bravery the idea of good intentions has become to this nation. Most Americans agree that health care could be better. Americans also agree that that IRS and the DMV could be better as well. College Football should have a playoff to determine its champion. There are a whole list of things that could be better in this imperfect world. One fact supersedes all others; the government doesn’t make complex markets better.
Health care is a very complex system. Many of the problems facing our health care system are because of government intervention. Thanks to the good intentions of Lyndon B. Johnson our nation is stuck with a Medicare system that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars and whose costs have increased six fold since it was created. Why would anyone believe that the government can make health care better when there’s not one single example of a successful government program? Obama has been successful at raising alarm over out of control health care costs. The president and his team have made the case that even a marginal decrease in costs could saves billions; however, no specific policy has been put forth that would decrease costs. Instead the president is going to farm this out the Congress. This is becoming the pattern for the White House; Obama defines a problem, offers no specifics on how to fix it, and then he hands it off to the Congress.
This plan might not work for health care. The mid-term elections are not that far away and I’m not sure Democrats want to be stuck with a government overreach in the mind of the voters. The president needs to talk about specifics.