Just like that

Shorter Times-Dispatch editorial: "Can you think of the scariest brown-skinned dictator out there? Barack Obama is just like that!"

This editorial is wrong in so many different ways, and not just because they, you know, go there in this one--playing footsie with the race-baitin', Gadsden flag-wavin', socialist hatin' nutters that are calling the shots on the Right these days.

Increasing the pool of insured Americans is actually a way to restrain health care inflation because many of the currently uninsured are young and relatively healthy. In fact, you need to require them to purchase coverage in order to end the odious practice of denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Legislation that only does the latter would create a perverse incentive to put off buying insurance until after you've been diagnosed with cancer/run over by a car/suffered a heart attack. And that really would drive up premiums, because the pool of insured persons would be disproportionately sick and old.

Besides, who's afraid of federal authority to regulate health insurance rates? We already have Insurance Commissioners who, get this, approve or deny insurance rate increases. We already have utility commissions who, get this, approve or deny gas and electricity rate increases. And the last time I looked around, it didn't seem as though I was living in a Banana Republic or an African Thugocracy. 

Look, I'm all in favor of socialized medicine. The VA is socialized medicine and it works well. Medicare is socialized medicine, and it works well.

That ain't what this reform effort is; it is a modest effort to make our existing system of private insurance and health care providers more equitable and efficient. It's pretty much the health care reform that Republican Governor Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts, and new GOP Senator Scott Brown supported when he was a Bay State state legislator.

But to hear the Times-Dispatch tell it, if Congress passes a bill that contains health care inflation, expands coverage and makes insurance companies act like human beings then, just like that, we'll be serfs to some pimped out, narcissistic President-for-life.