Universal care = higher costs

Promising "universal health care" is easy. Delivering it will be difficult. And as assorted politicians, including President Obama, propose sweeping health-care "reforms," Americans shouldn't fall for the revived pitch that increased government intervention in the medical marketplace can both increase coverage and reduce costs. Two stories last week illustrated the far-fetched logic of that proposition:

1) According to The Wall Street Journal, "a bipartisan outline" from the Senate Finance Committee "suggests peeling back a number of tax exemptions" to fund expanded health-care coverage. The panel cites $194.2 billion in 2008 revenue "lost" to "health tax breaks."

One potential solution from the panel's outline, according to the Journal, would be to "chip away" at the "tax exemption for employer-provided health-care benefits."

When Republican presidential nominee John McCain advanced that same idea last year, the Obama campaign aired effective campaign commercials condemning it.

But now many top Democrats, including some members of the Obama administration, want to eliminate that employer tax exemption. Though a White House spokesperson insisted again last week that the president still opposes such a move as part of his push for "universal" health care, momentum is building for it on Capitol Hill. And if Washington is to guarantee health care for all, it's going to have to find a lot of money somewhere for that purpose.

2) The Justice Department announced last week that it will strengthen its "strike forces" investigating widespread Medicare waste, a problem that trade groups say costs the system up to $60 billion a year.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson sold Medicare to Congress (and the nation), he offered assurances that the system would ultimately save money by controlling medical costs. Forty-five years later, medical costs have soared, Medicare is riddled by waste, and another president is offering similar assurances about supposed savings from a vast expansion of the federal role in the health-care market.

Keep this history lesson in mind as the debate continues, in and beyond the halls of power in Washington:

You can't get more for less.