A classic health care protest:

Read about it in David Hyman’s book, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles.

At his town meeting in New Hampshire, President Obama urged people not to listen to those who seek to “scare and mislead the American people.” Meanwhile, his new White House website “Reality Check” — your tax dollars at work, folks, on political propaganda — warns supporters that “the road ahead will surely reveal more aggressive efforts from defenders of the status quo to confuse and scare Americans with half-truths and outright lies.”

I immediately thought of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s notorious declaration in December 2001: “to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

Presidents and their teams don’t like criticism. They have total access to the media — primetime, nationally televised speeches and press conferences, weekly radio addresses, websites, massive party and political organizations, journalists at their beck and call. Their every passing comment is news. Their speeches dominate the headlines. They set the agenda, whether it’s the Patriot Act or health care bills. And yet they can’t abide criticism.

And when the criticism is effective, they lash out. They denounce their opponents for seeking to “scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberties” or “confuse and scare Americans with half-truths and outright lies.” (Quick: which one of those was 2001, and which was 2009?)

But the fact is that the Bush administration’s actions after 9/11 really did result in a loss of liberty, and the Obama administration’s plans for our health care really should scare Americans. And libertarians have been, and will continue to be, in the forefront of Americans resisting intrusions on liberty by administrations from both parties. They won’t be dissuaded by Nixonian claims that dissent and criticism are divisive and damaging to national unity.

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorializes against the price controls that President Obama would impose on health insurance, noting that such controls have proven a disaster in the states that impose them.

The Journal offers an alternative way of covering people with high-cost conditions:

University of Chicago economist John Cochrane also argues that in a more rational individual insurance market, people could insure not merely against medical expenses but also against changes in health status. This kind of insurance would cover the risk of premiums rising as you get older and your health condition changes.

In turn, that would free insurers to compete for the business of all patients, including those with pre-existing conditions, because then they could charge enough to cover the costs—instead of passing them to others.

You can read about Cochrane’s approach in his February 2009 Cato Institute policy analysis, “Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.”

Reports the Daily Telegraph:

While British health ministers have been quick to applaud the advantages of a “national” health system to fight the swine flu outbreak, the very centralised nature of the service cuts two ways, according to a new report.

Civitas, the think tank, blames the monolithic nature of the National Health Service for “putting the patient last”.

It argues that the “customer” of the NHS business model introduced by Tony Blair and continued by Gordon Brown is the health secretary rather than the patient.

The report sees much in favour of attempting to introduce private provision within the state system and competition between NHS trusts to attract patients. But it says that all this has been stymied by incessant interference from the Department of Health.

American health care needs “reform.” But genuine reform means putting the patient first, not last–as the president and congressional Democrats would do by dramatically expanding federal controls. Sick Americans don’t need a Doctor-in-Chief in Washington.

The “birthers” are no longer the most paranoid set of nutcases in town. Take for example this conspiracy uncovered by New York Times columnist Frank Rich: 1) Among the groups urging Obamacare opponents to protest at congressional town halls is FreedomWorks; 2) The chairman of FreedomWorks (a position not involved in day-to-day operation of the organization) is former House Minority Leader Dick Armey; 3) Dick Armey is also employed as a lobbyist for DLA Piper, a DC law firm; 4) Among DLA Piper’s clients have been pharmaceutical companies. 

Got it? Connect the dots? 

True, it is a bit confusing that the pharmaceutical companies are actually supporting the president’s health care plan. In fact, they’ve even run television ads urging Congress to pass it. But that just shows how devious they are. 

And today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi writes in USA Today that is “un-American” to tell “lies” about the healthy care bill. This comes only days after she discovered that anti-Obamacare protestors carried Swastikas.

Its only a matter of time until they uncover the truth: a secret Neo-Nazi anti-Obamacare cabal in Buenos Aires.

As my Cato colleague Chris Edwards has documented, government programs and contracts inevitably cost much more than first projected. This pattern of inaccuracy exists for several reasons, one of which is that politicians have an incentive to lowball cost figures. But a big reason for the mistaken numbers is that government budget estimators do not understand the degree to which people will alter their behavior to get their hands on other people’s money.

I explained recently on Fox Business Network that this means any government-run health care scheme will be much more expensive than we are being told today.

Our friends at Reason TV address this issue in a very compelling three-minute video that looks at how government programs — especially for health care — have cost several times more than politicians claimed when the legislation was first adopted.

An AP story today contains a quote that caught my eye, an indication that apparently jet-gate hasn’t jaded me as much as I thought it had. In the context of rising enrollment in the federal food stamp program (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and private charity efforts to feed poorer Americans, Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Tom Harkin (D, IA) says this:

Ensuring that our kids have enough to eat during summer months is critically important, especially during these tough economic times… Unfortunately, despite repeated efforts, the number of children participating in federally reimbursed summer nutrition programs in 2008 was the same as it was 15 years ago. (emphasis added)

At first I thought maybe he was saying how unfortunate it was that there had not been progress in reducing the number of kids receiving nutrition assistance, which would be fair enough. But the context of the quote suggests that Senator Harkin would prefer that more kids receive federal food assistance.

Sometimes I get the impression that politicians want increased power over our lives.