'How To Stop This Rush To Failure And Fix What Really Needs Fixing'

They rushed through a TARP bailout for banks that is full of fraud, waste and mismanagement.

They rushed through a $787 billion "stimulus" bill that is full of pork spending and has failed to create any jobs.

They rushed through an energy bill that is really a huge energy tax in disguise.

Now Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats want to rush through a $1.5 trillion government-run health care overhaul.

Haven't we learned anything from the mistakes of the past six months?

Paul Howard, director of the Center for Medical Progress at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Tarren Bragdon, chief executive officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, want to know why the rush to turn health care over to the government.

From their column in Investor's Business Daily:

Rather than fix the system's underlying problems (the tax treatment of health insurance and perverse payment systems in the Medicare and Medicaid programs), Democrats stand poised to heap more taxes, fees and regulations on private businesses and insurers. The only hope for fiscal sanity is the public's growing unease with Congress' profligate spending.

The Congressional Budget Office scored the original Kennedy-Dodd bill (from the Senate health committee) costing $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with similar tallies for other bills in the House and Senate.

The oddity is that White House experts suggest that as much as 30% of all health care spending — about $700 billion annually — in the U.S. is wasted every year, more than enough to pay for health coverage expansions and still have plenty left to pay down the deficit.

So where's the savings in Democrats' legislation?

Read the full column, "How To Stop This Rush To Failure And Fix What Really Needs Fixing," at the newspaper's Web site.