Mark Steyn: "In entirely non-ideological, technocratic, utilitarian terms, Obamacare is a bust."
With regard to outreach, Steyn continues his tradition of apocalyptic stand-up and gets the messaging pitch-perfect for the majority of Americans. "Obamacare don't work, Ma."
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been opposed to government health care because, as I’ve said in at least two books, it fundamentally redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state into one closer to that of junkie and pusher. But that’s a philosophical position. Others prefer constitutional arguments: The federal government does not have the authority to do what it’s doing. Dear old John Roberts, chief justice of the United States, twisted himself into a pretzel to argue that, in fact, the government does. But he might as well have saved himself the trouble and just used Nancy Pelosi’s line: Asked by a journalist where in the Constitution it granted the feds the power to do this, she gave him the full Leslie Nielsen and said, “You’re not serious?” She has the measure of her people. Most Americans couldn’t care less about philosophical arguments or constitutional fine print: For them, all Obamacare has to do is work. That is why the last month has been so damaging to Big Government’s brand: In entirely non-ideological, technocratic, utilitarian terms, Obamacare is a bust.
The emphasis is mine, not because I don't find the philosophical, economic, moral, ethical and constitutional arguments compelling, but because that is where we are now. There is enough to blast about Obamacare now that you don't have to bring up what Reagan thought about government-controlled healthcare systems, nor what chapter of Socialism Ludwig von Mises would have added Obamacare to, nor what Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook about Death Panels. Improving Obamacare with a laughably-named "tech surge" is a worthless exercise in turd-polishing. There is no way they can get to 46,000 signups a day by March, unless maybe they get Michelle Obama's imaginary Facebook friends on welfare and SSA simultaneously and sign them all up.
Steyn ends with the line "Obamacare is not a left–right issue; it’s a fraud issue." I agree. Conservative I-told-you-sos are worthless at this juncture.
I'm a big fan of Steyn, and I wish he got more mainstream circulation. When he doesn't become ensnarled in his own cuteness, he's equally as logically rigorous as Krauthammer and at times more comprehensive, and he really offers nothing to support what spurious reputation he might have in some circles as a xenophobe.
ReplyDeleteKeith
Steyn shows that he's actually more cosmopolitan than many of the narrow-minded leftists who would deride him as a xenophobe: it's just that he's willing to speak the unspeakable, about how western civ might actually be worth defending.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting question, why Steyn's not higher-profile than he is, but his willingness to sub for Rush might explain other shows' unwillingness to give him another platform. People can argue about whether Krauthammer's a "kept" conservative in the mold of a Kathleen Parker (with much better chops), but you couldn't plausibly say the same about Mark Steyn.
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Pauli, you're right that "I told you so" isn't the most productive thing to say, but it's important to argue forcefully for why Obamacare's a bust: it's not just THESE beuracrats in charge, it's that (as Steyn has put it) NO ONE could manage a multi-trillion dollar sector of an economy of a third of a billion people.
There's a great commercial on now, showing how the new iPad is thinner than a pencil. We should get back to the story of "I, Pencil" and apply it to the iPad and then to the MUCH more complex system that is health care. Many of us can't trust the state with the simple question of whether a person has committed a capital crime; what are we thinking giving them power over other life-and-death situations?
The LAST thing we need to permit is the idea that the machine would run significantly more smoothly with the right set of technocrats at the controls.
We can argue why to anyone who wants to listen to it be explained to them. But nobody predicted that their delivery system wasn't even going to work. So when you're handed a gift horse like that there's no sense in trying to talk economics with the short attention spanners. But there's no reason people can't use the website failure as a springboard to discuss how something like this could happen.
DeleteI, Pencil is a powerful story especially for the young generation. Maybe, Bubba, you're the man to write I, iPad and give it a update.