Good for the President, Not for the People?

Even as Bush knocks “government-run health care,” San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus points out, he receives a generous helping of it: The president's colonoscopy last week was of course performed by first-rate taxpayer-funded professionals at a taxpayer-funded facility.

That's annoying enough, Lazarus argues, but the president also mischaracterizes Democratic calls for expanded coverage. Health care reformers want don't want socialized medicine, they want “government-run insurance” that leaves the doctor part to doctors. And, he adds, they want the US to stop spending twice as much on its troubled system than countries with more successful programs. (More colonoscopy stories.)