From my emailbag yesterday afternoon...

“It has been clear for a while that we need a new President and a new Congress. Now it appears we need a new Supreme Court.

“Whether the Court chooses to call the individual mandate a tax or anything else, allowing it to stand is a truly disturbing decision. The idea that government can require an individual to buy something simply because that individual exists and breathes in America is an incredible blow to the bedrock principles of freedom and liberty. It must be repealed, and Congress needs to get about doing so today.

“There is one thing we know about health care. Government cannot create a system that will reduce costs while increasing access. Only competition and the price transparency that competition will bring can accomplish the imperatives of affordability and availability. Whether it is the President’s plan or the Republican prescription drug benefit, the idea that anyone in Washington can somehow manage one of the most essential and substantial parts of both our quality of life and the economy is, and always has been, fundamentally wrong.

“We can never know how many Americans are out of work today because of the uncertainty the monstrous health care law has caused. The Court has done nothing to remove that burden.

“Nothing about today’s decision changes the basic reality that it is impossible to eliminate deficit spending and remove the smothering consequences of federal debt without dramatically reducing the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. And neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have given the slightest hint of willingness to do so.”

Well, the last statement is utterly true.  But it's not just deficit spending -- it's the compound growth of medical spending entirely.

Here Gary gets it somewhat right.  This is what he says on his web site:

Revise the terms of entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which threaten to bankrupt the nation's future.

and

MOST PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON SEEM TO THINK that we can control spending and balance the budget without reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This is lunacy.

• Identify and implement common-sense cost savings to place Medicare on a path toward long-term solvency.
• Block grant Medicare and Medicaid funds to the states, allowing them to innovate, find efficiencies and provide better service at lower cost.
• Repeal President Obama's healthcare plan, as well as the failed Medicare prescription drug benefit.
• Fix Social Security by changing the escalator from being based on wage growth to inflation. It's time for Social Security to reflect today's realities without breaking trust with retirees.

Unfortunately the three top points don't get there.

The problem isn't entitlements per-se in the medical field.  It is the medical system in total.

So long as you can force other people to pay for your medical care, unlinking your personal medical decisions (and lifestyle decisions that wind up being medical decisions down the road) there is no solution.  The demand for something that has a price (to the user) of zero is infinite. 

If steak was available at no cost to you it would be your meal of choice pretty much all the time.  Ditto for most other things that enhance your life; if you could have a Porsche at zero cost, of course you would, right?

Without putting a stop to the ability of Juanita the illegal Mexican immigrant to show up in an ER 7-1/2 months pregnant with no prenatal care along with both a drug and alcohol problem, in labor, and allowing her to bill not only her care but the $2 million NICU charge to you, I, and everyone else in the nation we cannot fix what's broken in the medical system or medical entitlements.

Without putting a stop to your ability to eat yourself into a 500lb walking refrigerator, then bill everyone for the heart attack and diabetes you caused through your own personal decisions and conduct, we cannot fix what's broken in the medical system or medical entitlements.

Without putting a stop to the pharmaceutical industry's ability to force you, as an American, to pay 2, 5, 10, 20 or even 100 times as much for a pill or device here in America as you could buy that same thing in Canada or some other nation, we cannot fix what's broken in the medical system or medical entitlements.

Without putting a stop to hospitals billing you $30,000 for a procedure while the guy in the next bed over in your hospital room paid $3,000 for the exact same procedure because he paid for it using a different means than you did we cannot fix what's broken in the medical system or medical entitlements.

Note that the last two are unlawful in virtually every other line of work.  It is illegal to conspire to fix prices or restrain trade on a broad basis.  It is especially unlawful when it is done to someone under duress (and you most-certainly are when you're having a heart attack!)

Gary is right about needing a new Supreme Court.  In particular, what happened with this decision is that the US Supreme Court has ruled that federal power literally has no limit; the government can now compel any behavior by simply associating it (or failure to perform it) with a ruinous tax.  What this decision has done is turn 536 clowns in Washington DC into effective dictators and rendered "recourse before the law" meaningless.  I guess I should not be surprised after the last five years of blatant and outrageous lawlessness in the financial sector, but even I was stunned at the depravity of the Roberts court and its arrogance; it was a literal page out of North Korea's government handbook.

What Gary Johnson is promoting is far better than either Romney or Obama in this regard.  Now if Gary can spend the time and effort to think through exactly where the problem really lies, and put forward policies that will actually halt the destruction of our economy and government by the medical monster, we'll be making real progress.