Sometimes I feel personally insulted and attacked, and when that happens, my only recourse is this blog. Yesterday, just such a thing happened -- and not far from where I live:

The audience at a Teresa Heinz Kerry stump speech in King of Prussia yesterday craned to hear what she would say next.

Known for her off-the-cuff comments, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had said on Wednesday that anyone who refused to support her husband's health-care plan was "an idiot."

It boils down to a classical syllogism:

1. Anyone who refuses to support John Kerry's health care plan is an idiot.

2. Eric Scheie refuses to support John Kerry's health care plan.

And therefore,

3. Eric Scheie is an idiot.

Q.E.D.

I'm so mad I could just spit! I defended Teresa Heinz Kerry in this blog when she was attacked for offering to be a mother to abandoned gay teens! And this is how she repays me? Coming to my neighborhood and calling me an idiot?

I'm crushed. (Which is probably what would have happened anyway had I shown up wearing this t-shirt!)

How, you might ask, did I become such an idiot as to oppose the Health Care Plan To Save The World?

The Kerry website outlines the plan in glowing terms here. Everything for everybody! 99% of all children would be covered automatically! We'd all be able to get the same health care plan as Congress!

Allow Every American Access To The Same Health Plan Members Of Congress Get Today

It is of course promised that none of this will cost you a dime extra.

But Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon isn't buying. He identifies some serious problems which aren't being disclosed:

Though Kerry claims he would reduce costs and expand access to medical care, his two-pronged health plan would have the opposite effects, for it would bring America several steps closer to a system of socialized medicine, with all the increased costs and rationing of care that follow. Kerry would nationalize significant portions of the private health insurance industry and subject what remains to tight bureaucratic control from Washington, D.C.

Kerry's first swipe at patient sovereignty would be to enlarge existing government health programs. While former Clinton administration health official Ken Thorpe estimates these expansions would cover 18 million previously uninsured Americans, those individuals may be disappointed with what they get. Patients enrolled in government health programs often have difficulty finding doctors that accept government coverage. Oregon's Medicaid bureaucracy admitted to such rationing when it lamented in its 2001 Oregon Heath Services Commission Report, "Having coverage does not always guarantee access" to medical care.

Worse, research by RAND Health suggests this expansion would induce as many as 18 million additional Americans to switch from private health coverage to the "free" government coverage. Not only would this leave millions with worse coverage than before, it would force taxpayers to bear costs that today are borne voluntarily by the private sector. Because it is often employers who decide to drop private health insurance when their workers become eligible for government programs, the Kerry health plan would take away many Americans' current coverage against their will and leave them with poorer coverage.

The second prong of the Kerry health plan would draw much of the remaining private health insurance market into a nationwide "health alliance" created and tightly regulated by the federal government. Through various inducements, this health alliance would drain employers and individuals out of state-regulated markets, thereby advancing the trend toward greater federal regulation of health insurance at the expense of state regulation. This health alliance also would require invasive controls over the provision of medical care and ultimately bureaucratic rationing.

And surely, only an idiot would dare question the details of Teresa Heinz Kerry's husband's wonderful plan!