Arrogant

As is usually the case, economist Thomas Sowell gets it right. Here are some excerpts from a piece appearing on National Review Online:

The only thing healthy about Congress’s health-insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it shown by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed.

Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past attempts to pass such legislation — going back for decades — failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government-health-care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political victory.

In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something — anything — to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.