Katherine Kersten's Korner

If you need any more proof that Governor Pawlenty's dreams of holding higher office as a Republicans are doomed, look no further than today's kolumn. In it, she joins the growing chorus of conservatives who are up in arms about Pawlenty's proposal to give all kids health care coverage.

Wingnuttia Level: 10 (She's gonna blow!)

Of course, whatever Kersten finds fault with I tend to like...except maybe in this situation. But regardless, Kersten thinks like most hard-line Republicans (shudder) so her opinion on this matter is illuminating. Like many others, she thinks Pawlenty has totally sold out with this proposal.

She thinks that government health care plans tend to "cost more than expected, result in rationing, and be hobbled by assembly-line care?" Yeah, right. Take Medicare, for example. Low administrative costs, no rationing, best customer satisfaction of any health care plan...how terrible! The absurd prescription drug benefit plan is a boondoggle, but that's because the Republicans wrote the legislation and protected their friends in the pharmaceutical industry, not because there are fundamental flaws.

Then, she trots out the same old crap about how if only "market forces" were brought into play in health care, then everything would be better. See, if you had a heart attack, you would open up the latest issue of Consumer Reports, find the hospitals nearest to you that provide the best value, call them up for some quotes on emergency angioplasty and similar procedures, and then finally go to the hospital that gives you the best bang for the buck. Simple. It's like finding a restaurant or a home.

The more conservatives blubber, the less they can explain how the U.S. spends more money than any other industrialized country on our health care with dismal results. But people like Kersten are so wedded to the religion of the Free Market (praise Ford!) that even with reality smacks them in the face, they refuse to believe it. The commissars in the Soviet Union would be proud. Now that Pawlenty is seeing the light at least a little bit, he has become apostate, and therefore must be punished.