Getting a daily dose of Steyn occasionally leads one to what Mark refers to as “George Soros’ stenographers” over at Media Matters. (Call me a masochist). Since The Incomparable One was chatting about health care whilst subbing for Rush, I wondered how the steno pool would respond. They didn’t, exactly, except to huff that they have “previously countered” Steyn’s free market foolishness.
Well, I says to myself, apparently that’s settled too! At this rate, we’re not going to need research departments at our universities any more. We’re solving nuanced scientific mysteries and complex policy questions faster than Soros can say “and I STILL hate George Bush!” Awesome.
You can read the entire Media Matters “counter” post here, in the event you had some bad sushi and want to read something while passing the time over at the neighborhood vomitorium, but here’s the most precious parts in an article penned by Greg Lewis whom, based on his picture, is writing for Soros so that he can build up his resume and submit a really bitchin’ college application next year:
“Steyn best summed up his argument on Thursday’s show: Health care should be like buying tomatoes, he explained, arguing that tomatoes were cheap because they are a “straight commercial transaction” and their price does not need to factor in extraneous parties like the government, insurers, and lawyers.
For now, we’ll go along with Steyn and pretend government regulators, crop insurers, and lawyers are nowhere to be found in the tomato industry, if only to get to the real idiocy behind his argument, which is that free-market health care is the be-all, end-all of reform ideas.
Going back to Steyn’s aphid-infested tomato garden of an analogy, it begs the question: What if somebody needed a lot of fancy tomatoes in order to live, yet didn’t have the means to pay for them? That’s what insurance is for: to pool risks across a large group of people.”
Steyn’s blaringly-obvious point, at least to anyone who understands economics better than JV journalist Greg Morris, is that while tomato growers are subject to government regulation, purchase insurance and may have to employ lawyers from time to time, the costs associated with those activities are so small – dare we say “reasonable” even? – that they don’t have to be factored in (see, I can use italics too!) when setting the price of tomatoes.
In contrast, all of these costs are already blindingly high when it comes to health care and, beyond doubt, both of the proposed versions of the health care bills in Congress are only going to increase those costs, with the happy exception of Greg Morris’ generation who will only have to pay a very reasonable tax, while his grandma discovers that her medication is no longer on the approved list.
So, like, if somebody needed a lot of fancy tomatoes in order to live, then the way to get these life-giving vegetables – er, fruits – to the people who need them is not to introduce government rationing of them, nor to create a bulky, inefficient and expensive bureaucracy to administer their distribution. That would be the opposite of what would be actually – what’s the word? – effective.
I literally couldn’t get past the first few sentences……
Small clue for Mr. Lewis: tomatoes fall into a general class of materials that we generally refer to as “food”. Additional clue, Mr. Lewis – we don’t have to posit that “somebody” might need tomatoes – read “food” – to live. Guess what? We all do.
And amazingly enough, one doesn’t need 2,000+ pages of bureaucracy to generate a system that makes food available generally.
True there are food stamps and such, but one doesn’t have to remake the national food production / distribution / retailing systems in order to help out those who might find an adequate supply of food a problem.
Not that this country has an shortage of obese people at any socio-economic level.
Also, when I buy tomatoes, I don’t have to worry about the co-pay nor do I assume Medicare will cover my purchase (reimbursing the grocery at 50% of the list price, so they are forced to raise all its other prices as compensation) and my employer doesn’t offer tomatoes as part of the “benefit package.”
Intervention by Big Government has totally screwed up the so-called “health care”/”health insurance” market, so to the geniuses at places like Media Matters, the only possible solution is even more and bigger intervention.
Government isn’t big enough. It’s supposed to give every person within it’s borders free food, drugs, housing, and a job to do for the good of all. It’s worked so well in…..fantasyland.