For perhaps the first time in his entire stint as chief propagandist at the New York Times, Paul Krugman has written something with which I agree. But certainly not in the sense that he intended.

In his most recent op-ed, Krugman discusses the Obama administration's plan to take over the health insurance industry. He writes:

"Well, if having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a 'takeover,' that takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated."¹

Yes, the takeover did occur long ago—or at least the seeds were planted long ago and the present bill merely represents the last few steps toward the collectivist's dream of fully socialized medicine. It is a testament to the hard work of doctors and business leaders in the industry that we have not yet experienced a complete collapse.

But while markets may be resilient, they are also delicate. A market for health insurance cannot tolerate government intervention any better than a boat can tolerate a hole in its hull. Didn't anybody see that Medicare would crowd out private insurance and cost taxpayers billions more than projected? Or that by underpaying providers, the government would shift costs to the private sector?

The government has been steering healthcare in this country for the past five decades, and has run this ship aground. Why would we trust more of the same regulations, tax schemes, and social programs to fix the problems created by those interventions in the first place? We need to take off the blinders and face the facts: government is the problem, not the solution.

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¹ Krugman, P. "Health Reform Myths" New York Times, March 11 2010

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