Hoo Boy

This is the sort of high quality political commentary you can only find in The National Review:

Rest assured that I am not going to write about insurance per se. That requires a natural ear for droning that I lack; a numbers cruncher’s visceral need to drizzle “%” signs all over the page; and, of course, the technical knowledge to criticize HillaryCare and BushCare. I can’t do that. As Samuel Johnson said of the plot of Cymbeline, “It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility.”

I leave “deductibles” and “co-payments” and all the rest of it to the panicky-eyed patients milling around the doctor’s checkout desk while his shattered nurse waits on hold to find out who pays for the first three hemorrhoids.

I love the pride folks take in their ignorance, particularly when they're puffing out their chest because they can't evaluate the policy they've chosen to write about. It's like a disclaimer: "Everything I'm about to say is ill-considered and uninformed. Don't listen."

But more than not listening, I shouldn't have read. What follows is honestly -- and I rarely use this word, but I simply can't think of another -- moronic. It's one part cultural analysis of the concept of insurance, one part bizarre moral hazard argument. It argues that insurance created the hypochondriac. It argues that the fundamental reason folks rush to the doctor -- I shit you not -- is they hate to "waste" their insurance. That's right, I go and spend hours in waiting rooms because I got an insurance card burning a hole in my pocket, baby.

I just don't know what to say.