Where's the Other People's Money At?

Barbara Mikulski is the latest Senate Democrat to have serious worries about ObamaCare:

Before questioning Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing Tuesday, Mikulski said something that ought to make Obama’s blood run cold.

“The launching of the Affordable Care Act has been more than bumpy,” Mikulski said. “I believe there’s been a crisis of confidence created in the dysfunctional nature of the website, the canceling of policies, and sticker shock from some people. We read in The Baltimore Sun this morning that 73,000 Marylanders’ policies will be canceled. So there has been fear, doubt, and a crisis of confidence.”

“Crisis of confidence.” The last time that phrase was memorably uttered was in 1979. It did not turn out well for President Carter.

Mikulski’s worries are profound and cut to the heart of the law’s unsteady implementation.

“What I worry about is that there’s such a crisis of confidence, people won’t enroll. And the very people we need to enroll, particularly our young people, to make this whole system work, won’t happen.”

The amazing thing about capitalism is that it can work on any scale. A continent-wide, resource rich country such as this one can grow from a few million farmers and merchants into an industrial superpower of a hundred million over the span of a century or so. Or a port and fishing village like Hong Kong can become a financial superpower.

Collectivism on the other hand requires a constantly-increasing pool of victims just to tread water, a problem admitted here by Mikulski even if her language is (ahem) a bit more generous.

What has me cackling about ObamaCare is that it seems to be running out of victims even before it really takes effect. That has got to be some kind of record for Democrat incompetence.