We can't afford health care overhaul

Warren Buffett recently opined in The New York Times that because of these gigantic deficits our national debt is mushrooming. He said "Fiscally, we are in unchartered waters." He's worried that foreigners and even U.S. citizens won't buy the new government bonds issued to fund the deficits and the Federal Reserve will be forced to buy them. That's printing money and can be inflationary.

The Heritage Foundation puts the impact of these deficits on the national debt in perspective. Specifically they say:

"The public national debt -- $5.8 trillion as of 2008 -- is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined."

I believe the boisterous town hall meetings we've been seeing on TV and the ones held across the state by Senator Murkowski are as much about health care as they are about growing concern over government bailouts for the private sector, soaring government spending and exploding deficits. It really is a grass-roots movement by ordinary citizens worried about the direction of the country.

I suspect that most fair-minded people would agree that however noble the goal of health care reform the simple fact is that we can't afford it.

The president has argued that his plan will "bend the cost curve" and lower health care expenditures. He says that there are 47 million uninsured people in this country.

Now "uninsured" does not mean "without health care" and many people are not citizens and others choose not to pay the premiums to get coverage.

Still, how can we hope to cover more people and save money? The CBO estimates that the proposals will cost another $1 trillion over 10 years.

There is hyperbole and fudging on both sides of the health care debate. Sarah Palin caused quite a kerfuffle when she said that Obamacare would have "death panels" and bean-counting bureaucrats determining who lives and who dies. I think you can make a "camel's nose under the tent" type argument here but it's basically not true.

Senator Begich has argued that two-thirds of the personal bankruptcies in this country are caused by high medical bills. Diana Furchtgott-Roth at the Manhattan Institute has thoroughly debunked this claim, which is based on a flawed study by two activists for national health care.

I believe that the U.S. health care system is the best in the world. More than 30,000 Canadians cross the border each year rather than wait in line in Canada. We have all heard stories of wealthy foreigners coming to the U.S. to get treatment. The statistics bear this out.

Some point out that the U.S. is not number one in life expectancy. Yet after factoring out deaths due to homicides and car accidents we are numero uno. Steve Chapman, writing in the Chicago Tribune, notes that this "discovery indicates our health system is doing a poor job preventing shootouts and drunk driving but a good job of healing the sick."

I have never understood the pell-mell rush to reform the health care system. I don't think it's broken -- badly, anyway -- and believe it is an act of hubris to think we can transform one-sixth of the economy in one fell swoop.

It reminds me of Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek's book "The Fatal Conceit." In it he warns that planners and others really believe they can "arrange and control" as if they had access to all the facts and knew what's best. They don't. In a complicated world we should be respectful of tradition and the limitations of our knowledge. We should be wary of massive change and especially imposing it on others.

Surely experts and policy makers can come up with a more modest plan to help out those without insurance -- who can't afford it -- and do it on an incremental basis, so that we can assess the consequences over time and not bankrupt the country. After all, the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

Jeff Pantages is an investment adviser who lives in Anchorage.