Suggested Reading

Last week, in need of some reading material to pass the relative tedium of riding a stationary bike in my local gym, I spied a back issue of The Atlantic, a magazine I never read. Plastered across the cover was the headline, "What Washington Doesn't Get About Health Care," above a photo of a pensive (or even confused-looking) Barack Obama. On a whim, I picked it up.

And never has a chance encounter with a piece of nonfiction writing paid greater dividends than did columnist David Goldhill's comprehensive, illustrative discourse on everything that is fundamentally wrong with our country's health care system, and how the so-called "reforms" being pushed by Democrats in Washington would effectively double-down on a bad bet by expanding the current system.

Goldhill asks the basic questions that never got answered when Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other liberals in Congress started writing their thousand-page bills to revamp health insurance. "How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans 'have no health care,' when he or she meant they have no health insurance?" Goldhill inquires.

From that simple observation, he proceeds to demonstrate why modern health insurance is the problem, not the solution, to the hyper-expensive, often shoddy treatment Americans pay for every day. Liberals harp endlessly on the 40-million Americans without health insurance, and they constantly blame "the insurance industry" for the high costs and poor service experienced by the hundreds of millions who do have insurance.

But they never bother asking why no one likes their insurance. Goldhill does, and more importantly, he provides answers that go beyond facile charges of corporate greed. That someone can so coherently apply some basic Economics 101 to the multi-trillion dollar boondoggle that is American medicine, and explain the problems in plain language, is incredibly encouraging to someone such as myself, who's been arguing all along that paying for health care with health insurance makes utterly no sense.

And in case you're wondering, David Goldhill isn't some weird, right-wing fringe anarchist who blames government for every social problem. In fact, he is a self-declared Democrat with an obvious concern for our country's poorest citizens. But unlike Democrats in Congress, he brings a businessman's eye for rational, conceptual analysis, backed up with the data to make his case.

So, if you have 45 minutes and want a real explanation of the single largest problem facing this country, I implore you to give him a try. You won't regret it.