COUGH NOW – HEALTH CARE UPDATE – AT 7:54 A.M. ET:  The momentous week begins.  Democrats dream that, by next week at this time, as the president is winging toward one of his many youthful residences – this one Indonesia – he will be in effective control of one sixth of the American economy.  They call it health-care reform.  We call it government malpractice.

Republican star Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman who takes his work seriously, puts it very bluntly in the Washington Post:

Today, the House Budget Committee is to mark up a "reconciliation" vehicle, initiating the greatest expansion in government and entitlement spending in a generation through a partisan process to push "health-care reform" across the finish line.

Despite claims of transparency and calls for a "simple up-or-down vote," there is nothing simple about this process. This convoluted legislative charade demonstrates how far the Democratic majority has wandered from real health-care reform and cost control, employing any means to achieve political victory.

When you're trained in Chicago politics, this is the way it's done.

Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families' premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers' options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.

And...

If this debate had actually been about health care, we could have worked together to get a grip on costs, make quality care more accessible, address exclusions for preexisting conditions and realign the incentives of insurance companies with those of patients and doctors. Yet this process -- including its embarrassing conclusion -- demonstrates that the debate has never been about health-care policy but, instead, paternalistic ideology.

I'm glad someone finally said it, and said it well.

Should the Democrats' health-care train wreck make it to the president's desk, it will be a pyrrhic victory, and its devastating consequences will take their toll on our health-care system, our budget and our economy.

COMMENT:  Paul Ryan is, figuratively, just what the doctor ordered – a conservative who studies hard and prepares his comments carefully.  Watch him in the future.  He is dead on.

March 15,  2010