The latest edition of National Review features Ramesh Ponnuru‘s observations about the political implications of ObamaCare’s implementation. Ponnuru is warning conservatives and Republicans not to sit back and expect the law’s failings to lead to electoral advantages. He points to the need for a viable alternative.
While that theme is interesting, what’s most worth quoting is this single paragraph Ponnuru included as background.
The law takes an inefficient model of health financing — in which insurance is used to prepay routine and predictable medical expenses — and extends it to more people while making it more inefficient still. It assumes, unrealistically and against precedent, that government-backed experts can drive efficiency in health markets. It ignores how people respond to incentives: by performing fewer services when price controls are imposed, for example. These flaws are central rather than incidental to the law. They follow from its misdiagnosis of what ails American health care as, essentially, markets that are too free. Eliminating these flaws would require rewriting the entire law, which is to say replacing it.
It’s a great summary of the fatal flaw embedded in the 2010 federal health care reform law.
