Reality check.

• Author: Henderson, David R.
• Position: Criticism of Pres. Bill Clinton's health care reform program

The work of mainstream economists makes the case against ClintonCare.

THERE ARE WELL OVER 500 HEALTH economists in the United States. And believe it or not, they have reached a consensus on certain underlying facts about health care. These facts are largely being ignored in the health-care debate because the Clintons and other advocates of draconian regulation cannot acknowledge them and at the same time plausibly argue for more government.

Opponents of further controls have a powerful ally in the mainstream health economists whose work implicitly or explicitly makes the case against government intervention in health care. Here are the most important facts that these economists agree on.

Fact One: Health-care spending is growing faster that gross domestic product almost everywhere.

We often hear that health-care spending is consuming a growing share of GDP in the United States, but this country is hardly unique in that respect. Take the so-called G-7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In all but Germany, health-care spending consumed a higher percentage of GDP in 1990 than in 1980. The United States led the way, with the share of GDP consumed by health care rising from 9.2 percent to 12.1 percent, a whopping 32-percent increase.

But guess which country was a fairly close second, with its health-care spending rising from 7.4 percent of GDP to 9.3 percent, an increase of 26 percent. Hint One: Proponents of socialized medicine--pardon me, "single-payer health care"--often hold it up as a model. Hint Two: I was born there and left for "the States" when I was 21. Hint Three: This country is directly north of us. Hint 4: Take off, hoser. That's right. Canada, which has "solved" the problem of access to health care by giving it away and which supposedly has kept spending down, has had to contend with massive cost increases.

The Clintons don't want you to know this because, despite the evidence from other countries, they plan to use the police power of the federal government to freeze private real per-capita spending on health care in 1999 and later years. Yet in all of the G-7 countries, including Germany, and in every other Western European country except Ireland, real per-capita spending on health care grew substantially between 1980 and 1990. Indeed, in all but a few, it grew by more than 1.5 percent a year, meaning a compound growth of over 15 percent for the decade. The Clintons would...