The 2010 health care reform ("ObamaCare") was a high water mark in the pursuit of the Regulatory Illusion -- the use of government agencies to regulate an industry through administrative discretion, mandates and controls for promised but elusive social ends. Instead we have mounting costs, elaborate bureaucracies, and no prospect of cost reduction except by cutting benefits and services. The Regulatory Illusion imagines an omniscient administrator who can allocate capital, improve decision-making and distribute benefits more fairly than markets and consumer choice can. This seductive approach...

ObamaCare needs replacing. Instead of universal coverage at lower costs, it leaves tens of millions uncovered and increasingly greater numbers with skyrocketing premiums and costs, fewer insurance choices.

Its "top-down" approach means huge bureaucracies and prolix rules just to try to manage the entire health care field. This approach represents the "old" progressive thinking and it has reached a dead end. It lacks economic sense. A new progressive approach requires melding the old progressive ideals -- universal, affordable, accessible -- with sound economics. This leads to a...