A quote from
Don Luskin:
It's the same game, whether played from the right or from the left. Scare you into herding yourself into a malleable collectivist mass.
Well, maybe from the Conservatives a bit when they weaken, but the power-greedy Left in America rarely misses an opportunity to declare "market failure", followed by a grandiose plan to expand the power of the Federal state. FDR wrote the playbook, with Lenin's help.
Whether it's oil profits, climate, medical treatment, schools, risky mortgages, income differences, etc, there's always a "plan" for a grab for money and power.
That is why I am always highly skeptical about manufactured and trumped-up crises.
Medical insurance is a case in point. TigerHawk has a solid piece on the subject, in response to a piece by Ezra Klein which tries to convince the reader that American medical care is terrible, and the NYT piece by Mankiw that we linked yesterday. All worth a read.
And one more comment, re the "fully-socialized VA system." I have worked in a VA hospital attached to a major teaching center, and it worked just fine as long as you worked within the decreed limits. That's beside the point. VA patients have the choice of where to go for medical treatment, and they use those choices because the VA only offers clinic-style medicine, much like the charity clinics most kindly hospitals provide to their communities.
The Post Office works pretty well too (except for the USSR-style lines at the window), but we also have UPS, FedEx, etc as welcome alternatives to a government-controlled, lazy-bureaucrat-operated, arrogant monopoly which has no incentive - and no heart - to give a damn about you.
