Healthcare costs shouldn't matter?

Kirsten Powers, writing for the NY Post, breaks it down for us. Comparing the Iraq War to some unnamed future "Health Insurance" reform she says:

“Just like the Iraq war debate where everyone was up in arms about how it was going to cost us billions of dollars a year. . . . Oh, wait -- that never happened.

Why? Because the people who supported the war -- at the time the majority of Americans and Congress members -- believed that our very lives were at risk and that invading Iraq was imperative to protecting American lives.

Anyone suggesting that we should consider costs is met with complete derision. Cost doesn't matter when American lives are at stake, was the mantra.”

I hope that Kirsten is being a bit tongue and cheek with this argument. As a quick aside though, I'm not sure what she was watching or reading in early 2003 but plenty if people were worried over the possible cost of the war. Even on the right (9). Further, even if she is correct - that any sort of cost benefit analysis was met with derision - that does not excuse the sloppy reasoning she is employing here. Just because other people were able to "get away" with poor logic during past discussions does not mean we should allow arguments that are similarly weak to stand today.

She implies that cost shouldn't matter at all since Americans "will die" if we don't pass health insurance reform. Clearly even a bit of reflection proves her wrong. Obviously there is a point at which it becomes too expensive; at some point we simply can't afford it.  What she probably means though, is that the costs being thrown around are low enough or acceptable enough so that the “cost” shouldn’t enter into the discussion when the more important “ethical” issues should be what concerns us. However, there is nothing but red on the federal government’s balance sheet and indeed we have reached the so-called “debt ceiling” and Congress has moved to raise it in the last few days.  Here is a chart of the costs associated with the health care bill:

$2.5 trillion is nothing to sneeze at either. Especially when government programs never seem to actually meet their initial budget and indeed continue to expand and grow enormously as time passes. Quick, name a large government program that has been cut, ever. Medicare costs were $3 billion in 1965 when first passed. The 2010 budget allocates $453 billion for Medicare and in 2008 Medicare actually cost more than it received in revenue. Not that this is any great surprise really, we all knew this day would come. But we've been putting off doing anything about it for who knows how long by using the very same feeling (logic) that Kirsten is using here.

At the end of the day, we had all better hope that Kirsten is right - that the costs don’t matter - because you can be damn sure that Washington will act that way regardless.