What Comes After Obamacare Fails

"The unraveling of the Affordable Care Act presents a historic opportunity for change," writes John H. Cochrane. "Its proponents call it 'settled law', but as Prohibition taught us, not even a constitutional amendment is settled law—if it is dysfunctional enough, and if Americans can see a clear alternative."

The Affordable Care bets ... that more regulation, price controls, effectiveness panels, and "accountable care" organizations will force efficiency, innovation, quality and service from the top down. Has this ever worked? Did we get smartphones by government pressure on the 1960s AT&T phone monopoly? Did effectiveness panels force United Airlines and American Airlines to cut costs, and push TWA and Pan Am out of business? Did the post office invent FedEx,UPS and email? How about public schools or the last 20 or more health-care "cost control" ideas?

Cochrane argues that the clear alternative is a free market solution in which health insurance is:

Socialists Losing Their Free-Market Sugar Daddy

Precious little humor can be found in Greece's economic death spiral, but Rachel Marsden's "Who'll Volunteer to Save the Socialists?" will provoke a bittersweet smile from conservatives even as it reminds us how dangerously high the stakes are in our own nation's budget debates.