Medical Care

Imagine that you don’t feel well. You have had nausea and vague abdominal pain for a week, and you notice that your belt is getting tighter. You have not seen a doctor in a while and sense something could be seriously wrong. So what do you do?

There is one thing that supporters and detractors of Bernie Sanders might agree on: he seems to be honest about his convictions. He is an avowed socialist, instead of pretending to believe in a role for private insurance. Unlike Barack Obama, his answer to the question “Do you get to keep your insurance plan?” is plainly No. There won’t be any more insurance plans. Everyone will be on Medicare.

Even as ObamaCare is trying to self destruct, its advocates suggest a détente in which “Republicans recognize the conservative nature of the law,” in the words of Austin Frakt in Bloomberg News. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), they point out, incorporates some ideas from a Heritage Foundation proposal and a law promoted by Mitt Romney. Those are not, however, conservative ideas, much less good ideas, and are not a “sound chassis” for anything.

At the start of this year makers of medical devices became subject to a federal excise tax on their products. It’s an especially bad way to fund Obamacare, says the…