David Frum: how stupid can conservatives be, trying to <em>win</em> the health care fight?

David Frum asks the question: What if we win the healthcare fight?

I counter with this: is David Frum one of those moderate, wanna-be-liked-more-than-anything kinds of conservatives? Because I’m thinking he is.

He writes:

What would it mean to “win” the healthcare fight?

For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself.

Word. If only he’d stopped there.

The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments.

What the hell does the health care fight have to do with “flat-lining wages,” except in the sense that the higher taxes needed for President Obama’s “reform” will have an intense dampening effect on the economy, thus “flat-lining wages?”

Why is the “immense pressure for future tax increases” caused by “exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs” worse than the immense pressure for near-future tax increases that Obamacare will require?

We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

They’re not already “entrenched?” Not already “perpetuated?” Expanding entitlements – even though we can’t pay for the ones we already provide – is going to un-entrench, and de-perpetuate them?

Is Frum taking too many prescription drugs? Or am I?

Even worse will be the way this fight is won: basically by convincing older Americans already covered by a government health program, Medicare, that Obama’s reform plans will reduce their coverage. In other words, we’ll have sent a powerful message to the entire political system to avoid at all hazards any tinkering with Medicare except to make it more generous for the already covered.

You mean Obama’s “reform plans” won’t eventually reduce their coverage? How do you figure?

Or are you saying we should lie to the elderly, and tell them that Obamacare won’t ever reduce their coverage?

And it’s already next to impossible to “tinker with” Medicare. Perhaps you remember the Social Security debate of a few years ago?

If we win, we’ll trumpet the success as a great triumph for liberty and individualism. Really though it will be a triumph for inertia. To the extent that anybody in the conservative world still aspires to any kind of future reform and improvement of America’s ossified government, that should be a very ashy victory indeed.

When the alternative is falling off a cliff, inertia looks like a pretty good deal.

But not to David Frum, who seems to think that we shouldn’t defeat Obamacare. That we’ll be worse off if we do. We’ll be worse off…if we win!

Hat tip FoxPolitics.net

UPDATE – Linked at The Linkiest! And by Paco Enterprises! And Creative Minority Report!

I have to stop using exclamation points now.

UPDATE II – Linked at The Camp Of The Saints.