We’re commenting tomorrow on the latest plan to require Americans to carry medical coverage. We like the idea of an individual mandate.

A few observations relevant to the current attempt in Congress to do something about health care:

• Health Affairs, an authoritative policy journal, says the $2.4 trillion America spent on health care last year accounted for a sixth of the country’s entire gross domestic product. An analysis the journal published in February projected that health care would cost a $4.28 trillion in 2017, a fifth of the estimated GDP. Another analysis has it consuming a fourth of GDP by 2025.

• Straight-line this trend out and eventually we’re spending every penny we’ve got on health care. Just joking. Kind of.

• Various studies have shown Americans to be less healthy than the citizens of many other wealthy countries.

• Medicare, famously, is fast going bust: We now spend $450 billion on it every year, and Medicare taxes aren't keeping up. The federal government spends another $200 billion a year on Medicaid, money that is matched by the states.

• General Motors has long spent more on health insurance than on steel. In 2005, then-GM CEO Rick Wagoner was warning that health costs were threatening GM’s survival. At the time, it was spending $5.2 billion a year covering 1.1 million people; health costs were adding $1,500 to each automobile it produced.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Hillary Clinton must be gnashing her teeth.

During the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama beat her up over one of the differences in their dueling health care plans. She had proposed a federal requirement that all Americans carry medical coverage. He denounced it as a plot “to go after people’s wages.”

Now that Obama is in the White House, the idea of an individual mandate apparently looks better. In response to a congressional plan to include such a requirement in pending health care legislation, he’s calling it “a principle of shared responsibility – making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the costs.”

Clinton had it right the first time around. As Obama now acknowledges, the proposed mandate is a matter of individual responsibility.

The best analogy is mandatory auto insurance. When an uninsured driver hits someone, he or she shifts the cost of the crash – sometimes huge hospital bills – to the victims. Some scofflaws still drive without insurance, but the requirement has reduced the number of uninsured on the roads.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Anyone who has looked on in horror at the increasing politicization of the judiciary through big-ticket campaigns can take some relief from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week.

On Monday, the court ruled that a West Virginia judge should have recused himself from a case involving a business executive who spent $3 million to help the judge get elected.

Three years after his election, West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Brent Benjamin cast the deciding vote that overturned a $50 million jury verdict against the donor’s corporation.

On Monday, a 5-4 majority on the nation’s highest court took note that the businessman had spent three times more than all other Benjamin supporters combined and deemed the connection too obvious to ignore.

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Ooh wee, it’s going to be a long, hot summer.

The air is stagnant. Ain’t nothin’moving. The notion that the stimulus package won’t improve things fast enough has settled like a rock. Folks are heavy with worry. They’re still losing jobs, or losin’ sleep about losing jobs. They’re being asked to take a 24% pay cut, asked to reduce their hours, asked to take a leave of absence.

Asked? More like told.

Retirement accounts have been decimated. Thousands are getting kicked out of insurance plans, others are told to expect a seventy percent increase in their premiums over the coming year.

We find that other countries are taking advantage of our instability, our vulnerability. North Korea is pointing out to the world that the U.S. of A is just a paper tiger and our paper’s no good. How are we gonna kick their ass without kickin’ their ass? If there’s a third rail, let it be shown to us now.

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Supreme Court ruling making it easier to force elected judges off cases if they have accepted big campaign contributions is a strike against the increasing politicization of the judiciary.

The House’s plan to require individuals to carry health insurance, provided affordable options exist, is a fundamental matter of shared responsibility. People who go without coverage cost us all.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.

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