Same old healthcare ideas, new tactics

The Wall Street Journal editorializes on Sen. Clinton's new health care plan:

[T]he private insurance industry would be restructured with far more stringent regulations. Mrs. Clinton would require nationally "guaranteed issue," which means insurers have to offer policies to all applicants. She would also command "community rating," which prohibits premium differences based on health status.

Both of these have raised costs enormously in the states that require them (such as New York), ....

Mrs. Clinton and Ira Magaziner headed a health-care task force with more than 500 members that eventually produced 1,342 numbing pages of proposals. It's hardly surprising this boondoggle died without so much as a Congressional vote.

Yet Mrs. Clinton insisted that the public had been spooked by Rush Limbaugh, an article in a marginal political journal and advertising campaigns such as "Harry and Louise." In other words, the lessons she learned were political, not substantive.

In the liberal mind, it is impossible for there to be "substantive" issues with a liberal plan because the liberal has (self-proclaimed) good intentions. So, naturally, the lessons that Sen. Clinton learned were political not substantive.