Column on Healthcare

I did my column this week on healthcare reform. I'm hoping you guys can critique it, tell me what I should and should not include, and basically anything else that pops into your mind. I only had ~900 words with which to work, so I may expand it and submit it somewhere.

There are some critical views of the law at the Cato Institute:

Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law

Five Myths about New Health Care Law

Health-'Reform' Facts: Lame Defenses

“About one week ago, Klein commented that the 32 million Americans who don’t have — not can’t get — health insurance would have it under reform. Although this is true, it’s not the complete truth.”

Can you include links citing when Klein said that? I like in-text links to what is being referenced.

I believe your column would have been better if it was similar to the Five Myths about New Health Care Law column: attack the so-called benefits of the law and point out the underemphasized costs. State what should be obvious: there is no free lunch and speaking of food how much does obesity contribute to healthcare costs? Get off the couch, America, and get on the treadmill.

I'll be sure to read through those. Thanks for the new sources.

As for 32 million, he mentions it here (the one I used), but he also mentions it here.

The problem with the health care issue is that there are a lot of economic fallacies floating around, so you have to explain them before you can get to your points. That isn't really possible in the space of a column. So it appears like you are jumping around between points a lot, not making any of them throughly. You have to keep in mind who your audience is. If your audience is the typical economically illiterate proponent of government health care, you have to explain a lot more economics for it to make sense to them. A sentence here and there doesn't do that. It would for example mean spending an entire column just explaining that health insurance is different from health care, or that government can't magically create resources out of thin air. But if your target audience are opponents of government health care, who knows these things, then you just bore him with those explanations and it would be better to move on to the particular statements of Ezra Klein and how they are wrong.

You could mention that artificially-increased demand leads to a shortage of care, which leads to long waits and rationing. And who will do the rationing? Government bureaucrats on newly-created boards and committees, of course.