One of the many problems with funneling our nation’s health-care system through our nation’s political system is that it would politicize health care. The health-care bill that recently passed the Senate could hardly provide better evidence of this claim.

James Madison wrote that “history informs us of no long-lived republic which had not a senate,” as such a “temperate and respectable body of citizens” is necessary to ensure an “attachment to the public good” and to prevent us from falling prey to those “stimulated by some illicit advantage.” But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s conception seems to differ somewhat from Madison’s. Responding to accusations that the process culminating in a 1:00 AM Sunday night (Monday morning) vote on Obamacare had degenerated into something approximating “Cash for Cloture,” Reid replied, “I don’t know if there is a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”