Making Sense of ObamaCare

The New York Times isn't the best source of information on the Democratic healthcare agenda (especially if you've been reading the exceptional analyses at The Heritage Foundation), although they've got a couple of interesting features up tonight. Let's call them food for thought.

First, a bunch of stuff from the medical angle, "Making Sense of the Health Care Law."

But see especially, "Early Diagnoses of the New Law." I liked this analysis:

William H. Dow

Associate professor, University of California, Berkeley.

Expanding health insurance to 32 million more people will greatly strengthen our country’s safety net. The reforms will also improve the health of many of those currently uninsured, addressing a national disgrace: the premature deaths of uninsured people who cannot get medical care.

But inadequate health care accounts for just 10 percent of premature mortality. Even with these reforms, our populationwide health indicators will continue to trail those of other developed countries.

Significant improvements in life expectancy will require turning our attention to underlying social determinants that lead people to fall ill in the first place. The next major social policy fight should concentrate on the single most important factor that research suggests will improve the health of the next generation: investing in the education of disadvantaged youth.

The "education of disadvantaged youth" would be my first-pick domestic priority if I could have any wish, and I've said so at the blog repeatedly. What's especially interesting is that a number of the commentators at NYT are seriously questioning the ObamaCare legislation, especially its facility in expanding real health insurance coverage. But this was passed by the Obama administration, and if these idiots have proven anything, it's that no ambition to expand the state and the scale of nationalization is too small.