"Nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely as he spends his own," said Friedman. He also fingered the tax code, which allows for an exemption from the income tax only if health care is employer-provided. This is a free-lunch syndrome, one that removes incentives for competition and cost-control because we’re all playing with somebody else’s money. And in the case of Medicare and Medicaid, caregivers have become employees of insurance companies and the government.

A new government-backed insurance system will intensify this free-lunch syndrome. It also will surely lead to a government takeover of what’s left of our private-enterprise system.

But the Democratic agenda has never really been just about the uninsured, has it? And according to the Congressional Budget Office, with a price tag of $1.6 trillion in new spending, it certainly hasn’t been about real cost-cutting or budget restraint. Nor has it been even remotely about true market choice and competition. Nor has it been about tort/trial-lawyer reform, which itself would be a major cost cap.

And let’s not forget a spate of new tax-hike proposals that would sink economic recovery: employer benefit taxes, higher payroll taxes, taxes on soft drinks and alcohol, a VAT tax, or another income-tax hike for successful earners. And remember, existing health-care entitlements are estimated to be roughly $80 trillion in the hole over the decades to come. Wouldn’t it make sense to solve these bankrupt entitlements before we layer on new ones?

So there is a strong suspicion that the Democratic agenda has always been a class-warfare, anti-business attack on private-sector doctors, hospitals, insurance firms, and drug companies. In the name of cost cutting, what’s really going on is a major knockdown of profits. Liberals have always railed against the "excess profits" of insurance firms, drug companies, and physicians.

Knocking down profits and telling people what to do because government planners know best, right? Wrong. Absolutely wrong.