New York’s junior Democratic senator was here on July 16 to visit Binghamton University’s nursing school. The time is ripe, Hillary Clinton says, for the government to get even more involved in health policy.
Wait a moment -- haven’t we seen this film before? After all, Mrs. Clinton was in charge of her husband’s drive to “fix” health care back in 1993, before most of us even knew it was broken. Let’s recall that her effort collapsed. In fact, she even managed to lose the support of key Democrats, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan (the man whose seat she now fills).
But, she insists, times have changed. "The difference between now and then is people have firsthand experience of why it needs to change," Clinton announced. "It's more and more likely I will have a CEO come and see me and say 'do something about health care.' I think the political atmosphere has changed."
Actually, about the only thing that’s changed is that we’ve recently seen what government-controlled health care looks like. It looks like Walter Reed. The abuses there should give lawmakers pause before they try to nationalize the entire healthcare system.
So let’s give Congress a test run. Before we allow them to take over health care, let’s allow them to run an airline -- their way. Lawmakers would surely insist that their airline serve every airport in every state in the country, which will ensure that “Congress Air” (as we’ll call it) will go belly up pretty quickly. That should serve as a lesson to them that there are some subjects even lawmakers aren’t smart enough to manage.
No matter how smart they think they are, lawmakers can’t do better than the free-market system. Congress can’t “fix” health care by nationalizing it. We’ll all be better off if it doesn’t even try.