Sensible Health Care Reform

Via Carpe Diem, I found this sensible (and short) editorial by Charles Krauthammer that both describes why Obama is having a hard time selling his health care plan, and what should be done instead. On why Obama's plan is a hard sell, Krauthammer says:

[T]oday's ruling Democrats propose to fix our extremely high quality (but inefficient and therefore expensive) health care system with 1,000 pages of additional curlicued complexity -- employer mandates, individual mandates, insurance company mandates, allocation formulas, political payoffs and myriad other conjured regulations and interventions -- with the promise that this massive concoction will lower costs.

This is all quite mad. It creates a Rube Goldberg system [link added by me] that simply multiplies the current inefficiencies and arbitrariness, thus producing staggering deficits with less choice and lower-quality care. That's why the administration can't sell Obamacare.

This strikes me as true. The current system is already pretty convoluted and overly regulated; adding 1,000 pages of additional rules and regulations seems likely to only add to the problem. Instead, Krauthammer suggests two "simple" reforms: "radical tort reform and radically severing the link between health insurance and employment." I encourage you to read his full editorial for the details.

Opposing Obama's health reform is not a vote for the status quo. I don't think the current system is very good, but the proposals I've see so far don't seem to be an improvement.