Against The Current

Bruce Bartlett's criticism of health insurance reform:

I thought its proposals were ill thought-through and that it would have been better to take the time to develop something more coherent, rather than making things up on the fly, which appears to be the case.

I also believe the administration has done a poor job of addressing what I think is the biggest problem with the American health care system: It costs too much for what we get. We spend in total twice as much of our gross domestic product on health as most other major countries without getting much in return for the extra spending.

Finally, I think the goal of universal coverage is a good one, but the Obama proposal is not properly financed. I think a broad-based new government benefit should be financed with a broad-based tax that is to a large extent paid by the beneficiaries, as is the case with Social Security.