Metro Magazine columnist Jim Leutze has a penchant for spouting clich?s and making illogical arguments, always in the service of furthering statist control in the U.S. When challenged, his approach is to go on and on with irrelevancies in hopes that readers will forget the original point.

Here?s the exchange of letters in the current issue:

Leutze Misguided On Health Care

I?m glad that Jim Leutze had a nice trip to France (Editor-at-Large, July 2009 issue), but he?s jumping to an unwarranted conclusion if he thinks that his one satisfactory encounter with a nationalized healthcare system means that the United States should adopt some variant thereof. As a counterweight to his experience, I quote from Canadian doctor David Gratzer?s book The Cure.
?On a cold Canadian morning about a decade ago, late for a class, I cut through a hospital emergency room and came upon dozens of people on stretchers ? waiting, moaning, begging for treatment. Some elderly patients had waited for up to five days in corridors before being admitted to beds. They smelled of urine and sweat. As I navigated past the bodies, I began to question everything I thought I knew about health care. ? Though I didn?t know it then, I had begun a journey into the heart of one of the great policy disasters of modern times.?
The supposed upside of nationalized health care, universal access, is utterly swamped by the downsides of politicizing (or more accurately, much further politicizing) one of our most important industries. We?ll lose efficiency, innovation and freedom.
Gratzer convincingly argues that the cure for what ails health care in the United States is to increase reliance on free market competition, not to embrace government dominated systems such as that in Canada, Britain, France or elsewhere.
George C. Leef
Raleigh

Jim Leutze Responds:

George, George, George ? I should have been foresighted and sent the column directly to you knowing that you would not be able to resist rising to the bait.
I know nothing about the veracity of the incident you cited, but I am just going to guess, and this is a wild one, that you and your doctor-source are also against healthcare reform. Please write and verify my hunch.
Now, as to the uniqueness of my wife?s experience in France. I have enjoyed the fruits of socialized medicine in England, Germany, Finland, Japan and Thailand. All of those experiences were similar to what I saw in France. But more importantly, you need to know that I was weaned on socialism. My father was a career Marine Corps officer, so consequently, I was raised, in part, by his retirement. When I went to college, I joined the ROTC and Uncle Sam was kind enough to help pay for my last two years of undergraduate school. As a result of my service in the US Air Force, I was eligible for the GI Bill ? one of the greatest government giveaways, which has just been re-enacted for Gulf War Vets ? which I used to attend graduate school. Several years ago I became eligible for one of the great products of the Franklin D. Roosevelt era ? Social Security (isn?t it too bad that George Bush?s plan to turn Social Security over to Wall Street didn?t materialize). Now comes the best part ? I get Medicare. What a wonderful opportunity to enjoy Federal largess.
So, I don?t have to go to France for my socialized medicine, I can get it at Duke.
Jim Leutze

There’s so much baloney here, starting with that condescendingly informal address, that it’s hard to know where to start slicing. Here are a few cuts.

1. Does anyone believe that Leutze wrote the column in question, thinking that he was setting some sort of trap for me or others who oppose further government intervention in our health care system? What’s the point of making a bad argument to “bait” a response?
2. What does a faithful leftist do with evidence opposed to his beliefs? Why, just breezily dismiss it by saying that he knows nothing about the author’s “veracity.” (But Leutze wants Metro readers to accept his statements as true, no doubt.) Of course, he doesn’t know that the opposing evidence is not true, either. An individual interested in the truth would at least think it worth investigating since this is a pretty serious allegation — that government control will mean long waits for care. He could start by reading Dr. Gratzer’s book and then books by other people who have (or at least claim they have) seen the downside of politicized health care systems. I’d bet my right arm, however, that Leutze has never read anything critical of government intervention in health care.
3. I am indeed in favor of reform, but not further politicization. Many people have advanced ideas for improving our system without subjecting it to endless bureaucracy and political tinkering. Dr. Gratzer, for example, advocates changing the tax laws so we aren’t tied to health insurance through employment and don’t rely on insurance for every little expenditure, something that drives up costs greatly. Reform does not have to mean increasing federal control. In fact, the term “liberal” comes from reform-minded thinkers in the 18th century who understood that vast social improvement was possible by getting rid of authoritarian government controls. Their insights are every bit as pertinent today as back then.
4. Leutze confuses a “socialist” system with one where government pays for some things. The feds give out food stamps to enable poor people to buy more food, but that is not the same as a socialist food system. Similarly, the government buys medical care for some people, but that is not the same as having a government-run medical system. And more to the point, it makes no sense to argue that because the status quo is all right, arguments that increasing government intervention would be harmful are amiss. Most Americans are satisfied with their current health care arrangements; the point that critics of the various ObamaCare bills in Congress are making is that the great increase in federal control they mandate will make things worse in the future. Satisfaction with the status quo is irrelevant to that.

Other comments welcome.