Don't tell Barack... but perhaps our "health care crisis" isn't much of a crisis after all...

Here's how Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., put it in January when he introduced his latest plan to nationalize health care: "National health spending has grown . . . to $2.3 trillion this year. Those aren't just numbers, they're massive burdens for working families."
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Worse, the story goes, spending appears to be increasing at an alarming rate, up 362% between 1984 and 2004, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Kaiser report says that health spending as a share of gross domestic product went from 8.8% in 1980 to 15.2% in 2003.

But is this really a crisis in desperate need of a government solution? The short answer: No.

Unless, of course, you also think that we have a recreation crisis, or a fitness club crisis, or a computer crisis. After all, spending on these and other things went up just as fast, if not faster, than spending on health care. Recreation spending, for example, was up 386% between 1984 and 2004. Spending on health clubs was up more than 300%; spending on computers rocketed 1,600%.

Go read the whole thing, which also shows an interesting correlation between the spending in other wealthy countries compared to ours.  The fact is, we spend a lot on health care because we can.  We're pretty rich, and so we go to the doctor for a lot of things, and medicate ourselves for a lot of things.  Someone's gotta pay the bill.

So is more government regulation really a solution to this "problem"?  Well, let's see what government insurance regulation has done for us so far...

California alone has 48 mandates on state insurance companies, requiring coverage for such things as speech therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, contraceptives and infertility treatments, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI). Massachusetts has 40. And guess what? Insurance costs are far higher in those states than in states with fewer mandates. The CAHI study found that these coverage mandates boosted the cost of insurance by as much as 20% to 50%..

Via Cato-at-Liberty.