Investigative Classics: Joseph Rago's Reported Editorials
Investigative Classics is a weekly feature on noteworthy past examples of the reporting craft.
When Joseph Rago, left, died suddenly last week at the age of 34, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, and the nation, lost a talented and persuasive voice of conservatism.
In their appreciation, his Journal colleagues called him “a reporter’s opinion writer” who mined a wide range of sources. His work on a variety of topics – privacy, presidential politics, energy, trade, taxes and more – was so thoroughly grounded in evidence that his opinions seemed to many summaries of facts.
Like the best investigative reporters, Rago often broke new ground in his editorials – serving as a model for the opinionated reporting that is increasingly taking hold of news columns.
Rago displayed such traits in a series of editorials on the Affordable Care Act, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2011. The following excerpt, from “The Obamacare Crossroads,” is vintage Rago, as he draws upon history and philosophy to offer a prophecy:
In our world of infinite wants but finite resources, there are only two ways to allocate any good or service: either through prices and the choices of millions of individuals, or through central government planning and political discretion. This choice is inexorable. Stripped of its romantic illusions, ObamaCare is really about who commands the country's medical resources. It vastly accelerates the march toward a totally state-driven system, in contrast to reforms that would fix today's distorted status quo by putting consumers in control. … With the 1965 creation of Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor, government has come to play the leading role in shaping the way care is paid for and provided.
Naturally, the result has been high and rising costs. Since 1962, the share of the economy devoted to health care has risen to about 17% from 6%. Today, health entitlements account for about 5% of GDP but on current trend will rise to 7% in 2025 and about 15% in 2062. …
Eventually, quality and choice—the best attributes of American medicine in spite of its dysfunctions—will severely decline.
Democrats deny this reality, but government rationing will become inevitable given that overall federal spending is already at 25% of GDP and heading north, and Medicare's unfunded liabilities are roughly two and a half times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008. The ObamaCare bill already contains one of the largest tax increases outside the Great Depression or the world wars, including a major new tax on investment income—and no one seriously believes it will be enough.
So a vote for ObamaCare is also a vote against the vitality of American capitalism. Business elites have mostly held their tongues, or calculated that they can later dump their health-care liabilities on the government. Yet ObamaCare will lead to much higher levels of taxation across society. The tax wedge—the share of labor costs that never reaches workers but instead goes straight to government—will start flying towards the 50% that prevails today in most of Europe. In America, without the same welfare state obligations, it hovers near 30%.
