Will He Ever Learn?

Written by David Frum on Wednesday September 9, 2009

By early accounts, the President will today deliver a big speech urging an only very slightly slimmed down version of the big health bill before the House of Representatives. Once again it seems that Barack Obama's idea of "post-partisanship" amounts to: "Let's everybody do what I say!"

By early accounts, the President will today deliver a big speech urging an only very slightly slimmed down version of the big health bill before the House of Representatives. Once again it seems that Barack Obama's idea of "post-partisanship" amounts to: "Let's everybody do what I say!"

Worse, it's not even what he says. It's what the liberal wing of his party in the House says - and what he does not dare to contradict.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the president will again endorse a so-called public option, even knowing it is poison to Republicans and many moderate Democrats.

Why so stubborn?

Here's why: What moderate Democrats most want from him is cost control - some assurance that a huge new expansion in government-guaranteed healthcare will not explode costs and burden the country with crippling deficits off to the wild blue yonder. Trouble is that while the Democratic plans contain promises of cost control, they contain scant mechanisms for cost control. Or rather - they contain only one mechanism, a public healthcare provider that can ultimately use the power of government to forbid price increases.

Conservatives warn that controlling prices does not work. They lead only to shortages - rationing - because the government-imposed price does not pay the cost of delivering the service. Instead, sellers and providers substitute a worse and cheaper service for the unaffordable former item.

But while the public option is a bad solution to the cost problem, it is the only solution the president has got. There are no other ideas for intensifying competition to find efficiencies and savings on the table. So... he is clinging bitterly to the religion of state control and betting everything on it.

Category: News