The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Burglar Nabs Police–Now That Would Be News
“Police Nab Burglar”–headline, Ahwatukee Foothills News (Phoenix), Oct. 20

News of the Tautological

  • “Dredging Deepens Channel”–headline, Daily Globe (Ironwood, Mich.), Oct. 21
  • “Dow Rises, Then Falls”–headline, News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), Oct. 22

Why Are We Doing This Again?
“The nation’s medical costs will keep spiraling upward even faster than they are now under Democratic legislation pending in the House, a report from government economic experts concluded Wednesday,” the Associated Press reports from Washington:

Health care would account for 21.3 percent of the U.S. economy in 2019, slightly more than an estimated share of 20.8 percent of the economy if no bill passes. Economists have warned such increases are unsustainable.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare … (the legislation) would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates,” the report said. Moreover, it’s “doubtful” that proposed Medicare cuts will stay in place, the analysts concluded.

Measures in the legislation to reduce cost may take 15 years to 20 years to deliver a savings dividend, the report said.

And in 15 to 20 years, it will be, to coin a phrase, “someone else’s mess.” Under every plausible analysis, it seems, ObamaCare will deliver lower-quality care at higher prices, increasing the federal debt while reducing Americans’ freedom. Why are they so determined to do this to us?

Blogger Morgen Richmond, whose excellent background research on ObamaCare advocates we’ve frequently cited in this column, unearths a 1996 quote from Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton economist and health policy expert:

Do I believe, then, that democracy does not work in this country? If by “democracy” you mean the wonderful images of democracy our children learn about in American Studies in high school, then, yes, I do not believe American democracy works, as advertised. Rather, I believe that our democracy consists in the main of letting a perennially ill-informed, typically distracted, and generally confused plebs choose periodically from a menu of rival policy-making elites, each seeking to cram its particular vision down an otherwise placid plebs’ throat by whatever manner works, even if that entails a promise of the proverbial free lunch.

I do not consider this a grim vision, as Mark [Pauly] and many of you might. My vision of democracy is a distant cousin of Plato’s Republic, really, but one in which the priesthood is less saintly and elevated than is Plato’s and in which there is at least the chance to change priesthoods from time to time through a popular vote. And my vision of our democracy does cast doubt on Mark’s hopeful prescription, namely, to level with the plebs, to inform it fully of the moral trade-offs implied by the quest for universal coverage, and to hope that then instructions for proper policy will flow from the people to the policy-making elites. I do not believe that powerful policy in this country has ever been made that way, and I do not believe the 104th Congress will make powerful health policy that way, if it does try to make powerful health policy.

If there will be powerful policy in this realm–say, on Medicare or on Medicaid–more likely than not it will be a skillfully executed cram-down on a massively confused plebs. Let us wait and see.

Richmond describes Reinhardt as not “overly partisan” or “in lock-step” with Democratic health-care proposals. Yet he might have stumbled onto something here. The reason they’re doing this is because they’re convinced they’re smarter than us “plebs.”

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.