Taxes and Universal Health Care

Efforts to achieve universal health care without taking on the insurance industry or the providers will require higher taxes. And, as I've predicted before, calls for higher taxes will doom any comprehensive plan. I could be wrong. But here's a taste of the rhetoric that will greet any proposal -- like John Edwards' released yesterday -- that requires higher taxes:

Patrick Toomey, president of the Republican antitax group Club for Growth, said Mr. Edwards's plan wouldn't sit well with most voters, who, he said, "already think taxes are too high." The idea is "very good news for the Republican candidate, whoever that may be." -- from the Wall Street Journal

Maybe Edwards knows something I don't and the American people are ready for to reject reactionary attacks on "tax and spend" liberals. But why the avowed "populist" in the race couldn't find a way to redirect enough of the 16 percent of GDP we already spend on health care to achieve universal care without raising taxes is, as the King of Siam said in "The King and I," a puzzlement.