The New Yorker's editorialist Hendrik Hertzberg writes this week on the health-care debate:
Americans already have some experience with European-style socialized-medicine plans. The two most efficient, merciful, and politically unchallengeable components of the American health-care system--Medicare and the Veterans Administration--closely resemble what the French and the British, respectively, provide to all their citizens. No need to get spooked.
It seems to me that the claim that Medicare and the Veterans Administration are the "most efficient" components of the American health care system is, at the least, entirely debatable. And there's little doubt that both Medicare and the VA are, in fact, politically "challengeable," as Medicare is subject to reforms from both the right and the left and the VA features elements (restrictions on drug choices, for example) that somebody, somewhere, probably would like to change. What makes me laugh, though, is the claim that Medicare and the Veterans Administration are the most "merciful" components of American health care. How does one quantify mercy? Are in-patient clinics run by charities or churches less mericiful than Medicare? How about American doctors who join Doctors Without Borders? The logic here seems to be that federal programs supported by liberals are de facto more merciful than private, charitable or market-based alternatives. Still, if Hertzberg has discovered the mathematical formula for mercy, I wish he'd share it with the rest of us.