This is one of the best takes on health reform I’ve read come across.
Health reform is beginning to look like a run-of-the-mill “fix” of the sort Washington applies whenever a big-spending program spins out of control. When people get attached to benefits they haven’t paid for, the solution is seldom to cut the benefits. It is to rope in a set of dupes (in this case, young, healthy people) to pay for benefits they won’t receive. Far from breaking with the me-first ethos that brought us to the brink of economic ruin, the individual mandate fits squarely within the time-honored Capitol Hill tradition of identifying resources that can be dislodged from future generations, and transferring them to the generation in power.
As Charles Murray has eloquently observed, we’ve lost a number remarkable conservative thinkers over the last decade. Fortunately, we have Caldwell, as well as some of my distinguished colleagues at National Review, to at least start filling the vacuum.