I have two questions about Obamacare.

If this proposal is so much better than what we have now (80% of Americans have health insurance), why won't Barack Obama and his family, as well as members of Congress and their families, be covered under Obamacare?

If the goal is to cover all Americans and provide them with better health care, why can't we have the same plan that politicians get?

Second, why the rush? Why the artificial deadline of Congress' August recess?

If this is an improvement over the current system, why hide so much of it and push it through Congress before anyone has had a chance to read the 1,000-plus pages of the bill?

We rushed into a bank bailout plan that has failed. We rushed into a bailout of the auto industry that resulted in two of the three major U.S. car companies going bankrupt. We rushed into a "stimulus" package that has failed. We rushed into an energy bill (cap-and-trade) that does nothing to address our energy needs but imposes a huge tax burden on everyone who uses electricity.

So why are we rushing to adopt a "reform" of the health care system without adequate debate?

From a column by in today's New York Post by Michael D. Tanner, a Cato Institute senior fellow and co-author of "Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It" --

Health care represents one-sixth of the US economy, and some of the most important, personal and private decisions in people's lives. Reform will affect everything from jobs to what treatments your doctor can prescribe. It will cost well over $1 trillion over the next 10 years, more beyond that, and impose enormous costs on the economy and higher taxes on millions of Americans. If we get health-care reform wrong, it won't be easy to go back and fix it.

Read the full column at the newspaper's Web site.