And, yet, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton look at this distressing picture, they conclude that we need to launch more federal programs and send more money to Washington. They conclude that we need to put Washington in charge of healthcare. If they get their way, the rest of us will not only suffer from financial waste but will be swamped with bureaucratic regulations. Socialized medicine would combine tremendous financial inefficiency with maddening bureaucratic senselessness.

For all of the Democrats’ railings against business, this sounds a lot like when a CEO repeatedly botches the management of a company and yet is continually rewarded with more money and more responsibility. Not happy with the job the government is doing? Want a change? Then let’s give the government more control over our lives!

Americans will be dramatically better off if we reestablish healthcare as something that people pay for out of their own pockets, patient to doctor (remembering that people wouldn’t have nearly so much taken out of their paychecks for healthcare premiums and taxes if that were the case). Legislation needs to push to that end, not in the opposite direction. Under socialized medicine, only one of two things can happen: either total costs will rise further—they certainly can’t drop as a result of funneling things through a massive government apparatus—or else doctors will get paid less. And if doctors get paid less, then fewer people will go to medical school. So there will be fewer doctors, which will further decrease access to healthcare.

Thankfully, there will always be a new Democratic program to make medical school more affordable. We’ll just tax the rich more—along with other taxpayers—and send that money to bureaucrats, who will funnel it to other bureaucrats, who will eventually funnel some of it back to some aspiring young medical student who, along with the rest of us, would have been far better off if the federal government had stayed out of healthcare in the first place.

Ah, isn’t it beautiful? The American Dream, Democratic style! The Founders must be proud.

But it’s not too late to change direction—to move away from stifling, encumbering, wasteful, unmanageable, federal government intrusion into nearly all aspects of our lives. Barack Obama wants to lead us further down the road toward centralized power, labeling further steps in the same wrong direction as “change.” Let’s veer off that road, onto one that starts curving around in the opposite direction, toward greater individual freedom and responsibility, paving it as necessary as we go.

To do so will take great leadership, determination, and the willingness on each of our parts to teach our fellow citizens the wisdom of changing course. But it is possible. We need change, but it needs to be a change in direction. We need to reduce, not increase, the amount of money we send to the federal government and the amount of control it exercises over our lives. That will make things more affordable.

Obama isn’t offering a change in direction, but he is promising change—and don’t doubt that he’ll deliver. Evoking LBJ, he vows to increase our rate of acceleration down Old Democrat Road, shifting us into high gear in the wrong direction. For reasons that go well beyond the financial, that’s a change America can’t afford.