http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html?ref=opinionForget the wonkery. Let’s get primeval. Rising health care costs are a stampede of big ugly rhinos. They are trampling your crops, stomping on your children’s play areas and spoiling your hunting grounds.
President Obama wasn’t exaggerating when he said this cost onslaught is unsustainable. The rhinos have been roaming unchecked for a generation. We’ve thrown research projects, legislative and corporate reforms at them, all in an effort to tamp down health care inflation. But the rhinos keep coming. They are ubiquitous, powerful, protean and inexorable.
They feed on fuel sources deep in our system: expensive technological progress, the self-interest of the millions of people who make their living off the system, the public’s desire to get the best care for nothing, the fee-for-service payment system and so on.
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Then you look on Capitol Hill and you see a bunch of popguns. The politicians describe these big ugly problems, but when it comes time to talk about their remedies they tell you: Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to change. In other words, we’re going to eliminate the biggest, hairiest, most entrenched problem in the country without fundamentally changing the system and without asking for sacrifice from anybody.
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Obama is right. Things will be bad if we don’t tackle the problem this year. Things will be worse if we add to the costs without beating the rhinos.
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