As the health takeover vote comes down to the wire, it’s reminding me of the Democrats’ weird shenanigans on S-CHIP. Remember that? The Republicans wanted to spend more on S-CHIP. The Democrats wanted to increase spending even more than the Republicans did. So the Democrats brought out a bunch of sick kids to show why their spending increase was better than the Republican spending increase… and every one of their props already qualified under the then-current system. Neither the Republican nor the Democrat spending increases were necessary.

Now Obama is claiming he had to come to Ohio because of a woman who wasn’t getting health care. But she couldn’t show up… because she was getting health care, and not having to pay for it. Under the current system.

Meanwhile, our cash cow has been milked to death. Our other really big social “reform” and ponzi scheme, Social Security, is drawing down its reserves. The problem is it doesn’t have any: we already borrowed it all for other spending. All it has are a bunch of IOUs.

This is not the time to start another spending boondoggle.

Especially not on a plan guaranteed to cause spending to skyrocket. The Democratic plan takes an expensive system and makes it more expensive; it takes an unresponsive system and makes it less responsive. It mandates everything stupid in our current system and jettisons the parts that are working. A money quote comes from Ace of Spades commenter HeatherRadish:

You have to be pretty fucking stupid to believe this bill is ‘reform’.

Real reform would let us exercise choice, and let doctors, hospitals and the insurance industry provide us with the choices we’re willing to pay for. Competition reduces prices. It increases options. When more people can afford better health care, the cost of providing it to everyone else will drop! But that will only come from making the insurance companies and the health care providers work for our business, instead of mandating not only insurance for everyone, but every little detail of what that insurance must cover.

“Spend first, then haggle” is a philosophy of disaster. Like “vote first, then read the bill.”