Detailing the woes GM is facing in providing health care to only 160,000 current workers, but 1 million others, Jeff Jacoby provides a microcosm of the problems the citizenry would face should health-care fall under the purview of the government.

GM's hourly workers undoubtedly have a sweet deal -- who wouldn't love health insurance that comes with a $0 deductible and no premiums? But such sweet deals drive up the cost of health care for everyone. When somebody else is picking up the tab, there is little incentive to economize -- that is as true of medical care as of anything else. The price of prescription drugs, hospital stays, and medical procedures has skyrocketed in part because tens of millions of Americans are insured through their employers with low-deductible medical plans. Why not run to the doctor for every minor ailment when the out-of-pocket cost to do so is minimal? Why inquire whether a procedure can be performed less expensively when it'll be covered by insurance either way?

In no other area do we rely on insurance for routine expenses or repairs. Auto insurance doesn't cover oil changes; no one uses homeowner's insurance to repoint the chimney. That's because most of us pay for those policies ourselves, and therefore get only the insurance we really need -- generally against catastrophic events, like a car being stolen or a house burning down.

Only when it comes to health care do we expect insurance to cover nearly everything.

John Stossel:

But today, people expect insurance to cover everything, even routine things like eyeglasses and dental treatment. This is a terrible idea. Insurance is a lousy way to pay for anything.

Once some faceless stranger is paying for what you do, you don't have an incentive to control costs. On the contrary, you have an incentive to get as much as you can and leave the other person with the bill. Doctors also have an incentive to run up the bills. Patients rarely complain, but they might complain if the doctor skips a test. Insurance companies know this, of course; hence the torturous bureaucracy: the paperwork, the phone calls where you beg them to pay, the times they refuse to pay for what you thought was covered.

I can't blame them. They're just trying to protect themselves from fraud and hoping to have enough money left over to stay in business.

Government insurance is worse than private insurance. A private insurer has an incentive to cut costs; every dollar wasted comes out of profit or must be recovered by raising prices, which drives customers away. Government just raises taxes or increases debt.

So when our bloated government picks up the tab for poor people's health costs, guess what it buys: Viagra! In 2004, Medicaid spent $38 million on drugs for erectile dysfunction. Funny. I always thought one of the Left's battle cries was for the government to stay out of the private citizen's bedroom. Here's a great place to start.

Senator Tom Coburn (OK-R):

One of the greatest impediments to the president's vision of an ownership society is an inside-the-Beltway entitlement society, in which federal agencies expect ever-increasing budgets, regardless of their performance. The Washington Times article linked above notes the creation of the "Sunset" and "Results" Commissions, which will look in to eliminating waste within, and possibly closing down, federal agencies or departments. It's about time.

David Boaz, of the libertarian Cato Institute, notes that the current incarnation of the Republican Party has turned its back on federalism, abandoning the Reagan Revolution. Unfortunately, he's right. (It still won't convert me to the Libertarian Party, Tom, so don't bother.) I love the dig on the Dems, though:

But most liberals can't give up their addiction to centralization. Even as they rail against federal intervention in the Schiavo case -- arch-liberal Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's delegate in Congress, discovers for the first time in her life that "the bedrock of who we are" is the "Founders' limited vision of the federal government" -- they push for stricter regulations on pesticides and painkillers, a higher national minimum wage, and federal gun control laws.

Jeff Jacoby makes a good case for judicial term limits. Can we please do this for members of Congress while we're at it?

Paul Jacob:

There is bias in news reporting and there always will be. That's hardly the problem. The problem is forcing people to pay for the bias and propaganda with which they disagree. As Jefferson once wrote, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

This sort of tyranny has become a fixation on the left. Leftist artists cannot seem to enjoy their craft without the controversy that comes from forcing people who are offended by it to pay the bill. Leftists also want public financing of political campaigns, so that Americans are forced to pay to promote political views they oppose. Of course, this could just be a pragmatic decision based on the realization that they cannot raise funds voluntarily. In his column Jacob notes a poll conducted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances PBS and NPR. Only 8 percent of Americans watch PBS. Eight percent. Yet the argument is that PBS has shows that are important to the culture, or that no one else will carry. Maybe the reason no one else will carry them is because no one else is willing to pay for them. And I hardly think Antiques Roadshow qualifies as a important historical documentary series. We do watch PBS in our home. Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder. Two highly successful childrens' programs which would do fine on any of the pay-for networks we get through our satellite service. I've found of the other shows typically shown on PBS that I would find an interest in, I can find the same or similar type shows on Discovery or the History Channel. It's time to fully privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to cut the taxpayer-funding cord. Let PBS and NPR sink or swim in the free market. Ninety-two percent of Americans can't be wrong.

Today's Best of the Web has what is quite possibly the best explanation of what has gone wrong with the mainstream media over the past forty years.

It's not just that the media are biased against conservatives and Republicans, though they certainly are. It is that they see every war as another Vietnam and every supposed scandal as another Watergate--at least when Republicans are in the White House, which they usually are.

The obsession with Vietnam and Watergate is central to the alienation between the press and the people. After all, these were triumphs for the crusading press but tragedies for America. And the press's quest for more such triumphs--futile, so far, after more than 30 years--is what is behind the scandals at both Newsweek and CBS.

[...]

The problem in all three cases is that news organizations were so zealous in their pursuit of the next quagmire or scandal that they forgot their first obligation, which is to tell the truth. Until those in the mainstream media are willing to acknowledge that it is this crusading impulse that has led them astray, we are unlikely to see the end of such journalistic scandals.