America's Elected Geniuses

John Stossel shows that it doesn't take but a little of that common sense of the right-wing variety to produce an "oh" moment:

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system".

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

Expressing fear that Americans will fail to be sufficiently incensed to put a stop to the lunacy, Stossel quotes some of his blog commenters who offer the predictable retorts, which one may paraphrase as "we've got to do something for the uninsured" and "you're just backing rich interests." The first is open ended, and the second is irrelevant.

When building a particular system, as part of a larger society, we begin with a goal and seek the most direct path. But when we come upon a principle that, if ignored, would inherently corrupt our design, we must turn to alternate routes. The decisions at each intersection are what ultimately constitute our divided political philosophies, and on this particular issue, too many people wish to march straight through the warning signs, ensuring that we'll arrive at our destination bloodied and infected (and with the availability of treatment severely curtailed).

It would be wonderful if we could simply hand our elected representatives the directive to just "make it so" and trust that they would manage a workable solution. That isn't reality.