Richard Epstein still strikes this blog as way too reasonable:

‘As I have noted before, there is only one type of reform that can make progress in meeting the three goals of a sensible health care system: cost reduction, quality improvements, and public access. That reform requires massive deregulation of the many market impediments that are already in place. Lower the costs, drop the excessive mandates, and thin out administrative costs, and people will flock back to the system voluntarily.’

That’s a tall order.

Obamacare seems to get many incentives wrong and is based on the idea of cajoling, then forcing, the young into a nationalized system that will severely limit their choices in order to subsidize the old and the bureaucrats/politicians who will have much greater power over their lives.  Every law has winners and losers, and any change will be uncomfortable, but the goal for many was to ram through a one-size-fits-all, top-down law and worry about the details later.   I imagine a core of the bill’s supporters would be quite comfortable with socialized medicine and were quite ok with empty campaign promises about lowering costs as long as this thing passed.

It’s just pretty bad law.

Avik Roy wants some form of guaranteed issue to address costs but wants to steer us towards free-market solutions, rather than the current direction.

Robert Book at Forbes adds:

‘If it’s discriminatory to assume that every potential voter has access to a government photo ID — which is free — how is it not discriminatory to assume that every American has a computer with internet access, to obtain health coverage on healthcare.gov?’

I really thought Americans, even the young, the hip, and racially conscious had enough independence of spirit and skepticism to gently mock the progressive Food Pyramid bureaucrats.  You really don’t need many of these people claiming to know better than you how to run a major portion of the economy and increasingly telling you how to run important parts of your life, like where and how much you end up working and what kinds of food you ‘ought’ to be eating.

It’s like chaining yourself to a series of pneumatic tubes in an act of collectivist solidarity.

I understand that not everyone shares my view.

Thanks to a reader.  Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

‘Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization’