Nick Gillespie on Awful Obamacare vs. Today's Horrible System.

In a long piece in Sunday's New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the story of a college pal named Scott Androes who has Stage 4 prostate cancer. His voluntarily uninsured friend, says Kristof, would have benefited had Obamacare been around a decade or so sooner. "If you favor gutting 'Obamacare,'" writes Kristof, "please listen to Scott's story."

The story is the latest in the easy equation of President Obama's controversial health-care reform plan with all that is good and decent—and opposition to it as uncivilized at best and morally repugnant at worst.

But the story Kristof tells is no easy-peasy parable of universal coverage uber alles, argues Reason's Nick Gillespie. It's equal parts wilfully stupid decisions on the part of his friend and—this is no small thing—health care costs being driven up by precisely the sort of regulations and bureaucracy that Obamacare will put on a heavy dose of steroids. Indeed, the end result of Obamacare—and whatever plan Mitt Romney would be likely to back if he becomes president—is more likely to be more expensive and less accessible care.