Choices, Choices, Choices

Ezra Klein has his undies in a bundle because Charles Krauthammer looks into his crystal ball and sees a grim but plausible of the wreck we have come to know as ObamaCare. Krauthammer envisions a pseudo-nationalized health insurance industry run entirely through private insurers. Krauthammer calls this ObamaCare 2.0. The insurance companies, despite their public flogging, will end up living large, costs will continue to explode and in the end we will end up with the same rationing we would have had through ObamaCare 1.0. Klein misses the point entirely and responds "We Ration. We Ration. We Ration. We Ration."

Ronald Bailey plays Inigo Montoya position to Klein's Vizzini and argues: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Bailey is correct, Klein doesn't understand rationing. Americans have fewer choices in health care than they do with most other purchasing decisions, with the exception being utilities. Speaking of utilities, Krauthammer sees just that in his crystal ball:

The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage -- but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities.

If the choices that lie ahead are a government monopoly or government regulated utility, I choose neither.

Government solutions created this situation; more government solutions can only make it worse. As Bailey notes the left suffers from "lack of imagination and a truly touching and naive faith in the efficacy of top/down government 'solutions'." That the "Nanny-State" type like Klein could think outside their self-inflicted box and craft a solution that would truly lead to more choices, seems in a word, inconceivable. They wouldn't want to overwhelm us:

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