For most of this year, the liberal Holy Grail has been the so-called "public option"--a new government-run insurance program offered to working age people and their families, much as Medicare is available to senior citizens. But, despite a full-court press by liberal activists, the idea has foundered on its complete lack of sense.

The only plausible reason to put more people in government-run insurance would be cost control, but no one believes the federal government now knows how to control costs sensibly. Liberals say a new insurance bureaucracy should be given the power to use Medicare's price-setting and regulatory structure to cut costs. But that structure has never successfully controlled Medicare spending because price-setting doesn't address volume--and so creates an incentive for more and more spending. Indeed, the Obama administration admits that Medicare's current arbitrary bureaucratic payment systems are a prime source of the inefficiency and inequity throughout the entire health sector, driving up costs for everyone. That's why the president and his team are proposing to set up an independent Medicare commission to straighten out the mess. They know they don't know how to do it and can only hope someone else does. So if Medicare is a big part of the problem, how is its model the solution?