After the Healthcare Meltdown

Now that President Obama has got us into this mess, what do we do about it?

Wise heads are talking about sensible healthcare reform, doing something about the uninsured instead of trying to rebuild the whole system on the model of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

But let us not be diverted by small ball. Let us think big ball.

The basic problem with health care (and education and just about everything to do with the modern welfare state) is that a lot of people who could be paying for their health care and should be paying for their health care are not paying for their health care. Government is good at encouraging people who don't want to pay for health care to imagine that they have a moral and economic right to free or subsidized health care. But government is thugs in pinstripe suits.

Dick Morris has remarked that that the Democratic Party is built on six pillars: blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, unions, and the elderly. You'll notice that just about all the government programs about which we've heard tell give money to these special interests. But the elderly, he writes, are turning away from the Democrats because of the threat in Obamacare to their Medicare benefits.

Maybe they will, but the Republicans aren't likely to be much help. Republicans think that Medicare needs "reform" too. Only they aren't quite as two-faced about it as the Democrats.

Sooner or later all these programs that keep up the pillars in the Democratic Party are going to come tumbling down, because there just ain't the money there to pay for them all. Democrats have promised the same money to six different pillars.

Maybe the right thing to do is to stand back and let the pillars fall down. After all, blacks and Latinos should get a job. Union thugs should get a job. Single women should get a husband, Young people should get a job. And the elderly, America's richest kind, should get a life and pay for their own medical care, as most of them can.

Then we would have money available to help people who are needy through no fault of their own. Instead, we are paying out trillions in benefits to middle-class people who can afford to look after themselves.

Is this a great country or what!