You don’t cheat on your wife, repeatedly, over a period of years, with prostitutes without developing a certain facility for deceiving people. And it turns out that kind of thing can come in handy when you need to write fundraising letters. Eric Kleefeld has the text:
So what about the claims that this plan will reduce health care costs? Well, to do that will simply require a plan to ration existing resource sand restrict benefits for certain medicines, procedures and therapies.
The government will determine who is eligible for what and if you are older or have certain other afflictions, an economist will determine if you are worthy of the government’s “investment” in your longevity. That’s right, a bureaucrat will be making life or death decisions.
This is what’s so frustrating about the health reform debate — instead of arguing the merits of the provisions that are actually in the bills, we’re arguing the merits of made-up fake provisions. Meanwhile in the tactics-obsessed world of political reporting we then move on to a debate about what kind of strategic errors the White House may or may not have made, rather than reporting aimed at correcting the record and giving people accurate information about health care. Heck, Mickey Kaus has spent the past two months dedicating nearly 100 percent of his attention to criticizing the White House for leaving itself open to having its plan lied about rather than to criticizing the liars for lying to people. I’m old-fashioned, though, and don’t think politicians should say “a bureaucrat will be making life or death decisions” unless there’s actually a legislative provision that would have that effect.