by Steve Timmer

Jul 4, 2012, 2:00 PM

She’s back in the saddle again

Kersten must be getting saddle sore

Last Sunday, Katherine Kersten rode her high horse in the Strib’s conservative parade for the third time in a month — far more often that we were promised just a short time ago. But what’s a little rawhide when you can write on three of your favorite hot buttons: gay marriage, segregation, and on Sunday, health care, or rather, the denial of it? (The threat of terrorists has apparently lost its frisson for Katie.)

Katie was persuaded to hit the dusty trail again (okay, I’ll stop) because of last Thursday’s surprising — to Katie, anyway — Supreme Court decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. To summarize, Katie says that two things that the public was told are untrue:

1) The AFA would “bend the health care cost curve down.” And it hasn’t happened!

2) The promise you could keep your doctor is untrue.

 According to Kersten, insurers are leaving the marketplace, hospitals are closing, we’re going to lose millions of “people years,” and the entire medical establishment is in a death spiral. These are remarkable things for a law that hasn’t, for the most part, been implemented yet.

There is so much uncertainty about the ACA, says Kersten. Never mind that most of it is spread by Katie and the pack she runs with, who resemble nothing so much as a bunch of adolescents lobbing stink bombs into the girls’ bathroom.

And yet, this fact remains: the U.S. scores dead last in survey after survey of health care cost (highest) and outcomes (worst). We must be doing something right! According to Katie.

According to Reuters, on the other hand, the Commonwealth Fund finds:

 Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The OECD finds similar grim news.

It’s the status quo that’s killing us, not some imagined death panels.