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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

Yesterday, Leslie was talking about a 'tipping point'.  This article is in 
today's WSJ.  If not interested, just delete.  Take from it what you will

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Beware of the Big-Government Tipping Point 

Socialized health care fundamentally changes the relationship between 
citizens and state.
    

By PETER WEHNER and PAUL RYAN

For most of our nation's history, our approach to economics has favored 
enterprise, self-reliance and the free market. While the American economy has 
never been entirely laissez-faire, we have historically cared more about 
equality of opportunity than equality of results. And while Americans have 
embraced elements of the New Deal, the Great Society and progressive 
taxation, we have traditionally viewed welfare as a way to help those in dire 
need, not as a way of life for the middle class. We have grasped, perhaps 
more than any other nation, that there is a long-run cost to dependency on 
the state, including an aversion to risk that eventually enervates the 
entrepreneurial spirit necessary for innovation and prosperity.

 This outlook, once assumed, is now under attack due to a recent series of 
political and economic events.

The first is the unprecedented intervention by the federal government, in the 
form of a $700 billion relief package intended for our financial institutions 
after the credit crisis last September. This was followed by extending 
billions of dollars of federal assistance to America's auto makers in order 
to prevent their imminent bankruptcy -- the first emergency bailout that went 
to companies outside the financial sector. We understand why the federal 
government did this, and even supported legislation that, while hardly 
perfect, prevented an economic meltdown.

Nonetheless, the consequences of this undertaking are enormous. Not only has 
the size of the expenditures been staggering -- there is talk of another 
stimulus package worth an estimated $825 billion -- but we are witnessing a 
fundamental transformation of government's relationship with the polity and 
the economy.

The last several months are a foreshadowing of a new era of government 
activism, rather than an unfortunate but necessary (and anomalous) emergency 
action. We will soon shift from a market-based economy to a political one in 
which the government picks winners and losers and extends its reach and power 
in unprecedented ways.


This shift is exemplified by the desire of President-elect Barack Obama and 
the Democratic Congress to push us toward government-run health care.

For all his talk of allowing consumers to select their own health-care 
coverage, Mr. Obama's proposal, as he laid it out in his campaign, will 
provide strong financial incentives for employers and individuals to sign up 
with a new, Medicare-style government plan for working-age people and their 
families. This plan will almost certainly use a price-control system similar 
to the one in place for Medicare, allowing it to charge artificially low 
premiums by paying fees well below private rates. These low premiums will 
serve as a magnet for enrollment and will devastate the private companies 
trying to compete in the health-insurance market. The result will be the 
nationalization of the health-care sector, which today accounts for 16% of 
U.S. gross domestic product.

Nationalizing health care will be profoundly detrimental to the quality of 
American medicine. In the name of cost control, the government would make 
private investment in medical innovation far riskier, and thus delay the 
development of potentially lifesaving treatments.

It will also put America on a glide path toward European-style socialism. We 
need only look to Great Britain and elsewhere to see the effects of 
socialized health care on the broader economy. Once a large number of 
citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their 
attachment to government. Every time a tax cut is proposed, the guardians of 
the new medical-welfare state will argue that tax cuts would come at the 
expense of health care -- an argument that would resonate with middle-class 
families entirely dependent on the government for access to doctors and 
hospitals.

Of course, this health-care plan is occurring against our particular fiscal 
backdrop: Without major reform, our federal entitlement programs will soon 
double the size of government. The result will be a crushing burden of debt 
and taxes.

In short, we may be approaching a tipping point for democratic capitalism.

While the scope of the challenge should not be underestimated, those of us 
worried about this fundamental reorientation of politics and economics have 
several things working in our favor. Among them is that a public accustomed 
to iTunes, Facebook, Google, eBay, Amazon and WebMD is not clamoring for 
centralized, bureaucratic government. The strong American instinct for 
individual initiative and entrepreneurship remains intact.

In addition, confidence in government -- from Congress to those responsible 
for oversight of the financial system -- is quite low.

Our sense is that at the moment, the public is not thinking in terms of "big 
government" or "small government." Instead, Americans want efficient 
government -- one that is modern, responsive and adaptive. People want 
government to act as a fair referee, providing guardrails that allow 
individuals to rise without intrusively dictating individual decisions.

If conservatives hope to win converts to our cause, we need to understand 
this new moment and put forward an agenda that reforms key institutions in a 
way that advances individual freedom, without creating an unacceptable level 
of insecurity.

This is no easy task, and it must begin with providing a compelling 
alternative to what contemporary liberalism and Mr. Obama are about to offer. 
This especially includes health care, where we must start by recalling that 
our current health-insurance system was designed to meet the needs of a 20th 
century economy and World War II-era employment laws. It is hopelessly 
outdated, yet the Obama plan would make the system even more sclerotic.

The core of our message needs to be a commitment to creating a health-care 
plan that meets the demands of the modern economy. We need to convince 
concerned citizens that we can help the uninsured find coverage in the 
private sector and use market incentives to contain costs. The result will be 
a system that makes it possible for everyone to afford health insurance, 
including those with pre-existing conditions.


Tax credits, high-risk pools, insurance choice and regulatory reform can form 
the basis of a transformation from today's enormously costly and inefficient 
third-party system into one driven by ownership, choice and competition. And 
at the nucleus of this redesigned system will be the patient-doctor 
relationship.

If we hope to succeed in making our case, it will require a concerted 
education campaign that relies on hard data and facts, rigorous and 
accessible public arguments, and persuasive public advocates.

This is quite a tall order. But if we do not succeed in resisting greater 
state involvement in the economy -- and health care is meant to be the 
beachhead of this effort -- we will move from a limited welfare state into a 
full-blown one. This will reshape, in deep and enduring ways, our nation's 
historic sensibilities. It will lead here, as it has elsewhere, to passivity 
and dependence on the state. Such habits, once acquired, are hard to shake.

Between now and the end of this decade may be one of those rare moments in 
which among other things will turn decisively one way or the other. The 
stakes could hardly be higher for our way of life.