The Democrats have cobbled together their 2008 platform and it is a predictable mixture of bad ideas and promises they can’t possibly keep. This second category is well represented by the health care plank.
In fact, the very title of the health care section, “Affordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans,” implicitly promises a combination that no one can provide—-low cost, high quality, and universal access.
In reality, the costs of health care will inevitably increase if we maintain high quality while expanding access. And if the Dems try to escape this reality via price controls, quality and/or access will suffer.
That the Democrat health care platform is economically unrealistic and disingenuous hasn’t phased its supporters, of course. Paul Krugman, a trained economist who knows better, abets the fraud:
Can Democrats deliver on that commitment? … For one thing, we know that it’s economically feasible: every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of guaranteed health care.
Krugman knows perfectly well that guaranteed universal health care has produced budget crises, rationing, and patient dissatisfaction in every “wealthy country” where it has been implemented.
Indeed, it has created just these problems wherever it has been tried in the United States, a fact that Krugman admits in a passing reference to the Massachusetts health “reforms”:
The Massachusetts plan has come in for a lot of criticism. … And its costs are … higher than expected, mainly because … there were more people without insurance than anyone realized.
Nope. The huge costs of Romneycare are not the result of a larger than expected uninsured population. They are the result of the economic realities discussed in paragraphs two and three above.
Krugman declares himself to be “nervous” about the platform’s prospects after November—-and he should be. It is a collection of empty promises that the Dems couldn’t keep even if they intended to do so.
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