On Bloggingheads, David Frum tells us that Obama is offering to have us clean a dirty stable that is in fact dirty, when it comes to reforming the government's intervention into healthcare. He makes this observation at about 29 minutes +/- 2 or so.

What I can't figure out is why all these smart "liberul" people can't figure out the problem is that the President is only handing out toothbrushes and bullsh!t for cleaning tools.

If you want to reform healthcare such that costs go down:

1) Limit "unlucky judgement call" malpractice tort damage awards to real damages, increasing to a low order multiple of that as bad judgement becomes inexplicable other than to be negligence. Punitive damages should be limited to cases of criminal malpractice where a conviction has been secured, and payment delayed until appeals are exhausted. At the discretion of the judge and/or jury, the losing attorney should pay.

Not the losing client, the losing attorney.

2) Competition across statelines should be allowed, with out-of-state companies not required to entertain local states' pet insurance mandates.

3) The money's spent on an individual's healthcare whether it is the person's own money or an employment "bennie", should be equally taxed or not taxed, whether or not it is an employment benefit. This will cost me money, I don't care, it's fair.

In the event an uninsured patient contracts something they will likely not live to pay for, then we have to decide that when the charity otherwise runs out, we'll keep them from pain as best we are able, but that they will be let to die from their illness without treatment which is possible. Then we need to agree that mandated treatment is not charity, it is socialism/communism, and it is never worth the price in the long run, and that in any case it is the political decision of the states and never the national government.

Unless, of course, an Article V procedure changes things. Fat chance.

Edited 20100501, removed 5 spam comments dealing with high yield investments.