Nicholas Kristof wrote an article in the New York Times last week depicting conservatives as being “on the wrong side of history.” To support this conclusion, Kristof relies on predictions made by conservatives during the debates over Medicare and Social Security to demonstrate the supposed fallacy of conservative thought. More specifically, Kristof writes:

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.”

All dire — but also wrong. Those forecasts date not from this year, but from the battle over Medicare in the early 1960s. I pulled them from newspaper archives and other accounts.

Yet this year those same accusations are being recycled in an attempt to discredit the health reform proposals now before Congress. The heirs of those who opposed Medicare are conjuring the same bogymen — only this time they claim to be protecting Medicare.

Indeed, these same arguments we hear today against health reform were used even earlier, to attack President Franklin Roosevelt’s call for Social Security. It was denounced as a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and add to Americans’ tax burden so as to kill jobs.

According to Kristof, the conclusion that we should draw from this is that because those arguments were “wrong,” the arguments made today in opposition to Obamacare are similarly wrong. This argument however assumes a lot.

With respect to the fear that “patients will lose the ‘freedom to choose their own doctor,” the New York Times published an article last May which confirms that this fear has become a reality. Doctors are increasingly opting out of Medicare because Medicare’s “reimbursement rates are too low and [its] paperwork [is] too much of a hassle,” thereby limiting the ability of patients to choose their own doctors. Furthermore, this article published by the Heritage Foundation confirms what many of us have known all along, that government intervention precludes patient choice. Tellingly, the authors of this article write:

Last August, under a veto threat from President Clinton, Members of Congress quietly enacted a new provision of law as part of the voluminous Balanced Budget Act of 1997. It is unprecedented in American law.

Under Section 4507 of the Balanced Budget Act, any doctor is free to contract privately with a patient enrolled in the Medicare program, treat that patient on an independent basis outside of the rules and regulations of the Medicare program, and refrain from submitting any claims to the taxpayer for Medicare reimbursement.

However, Section 4507 contains a catch. A doctor who wishes to contract privately with a patient enrolled in Medicare Part B must first sign an affidavit to that effect, submit that affidavit to the Secretary of Health and Human Services within ten days, and agree to remove himself from the Medicare program and refrain from submitting any claims to Medicare for reimbursement for a period two full years.

In other words, a doctor could not even treat his mother in exchange for an apple pie without dropping out of Medicare for two years. The new law has been the subject of extensive and heated debate in Congress. It also is becoming a subject of debate around the country.

Maybe it’s just me, but it certainly seems as though those predictions made long ago about Medicare have come true.

Kristof’s argument regarding social security is just as tenuous. Kristof argues that because social security has not yet bankrupted our country, the predictions made during the debate over it suggesting that social security would bankrupt our country were wrong. What Kristof fails to consider is that social security is going bankrupt. By disregarding this, Kristof turns a blind eye to facts suggesting that those naysayers were correct.

More importantly though, Kristof’s argument relies on the assumption that Obamacare would somehow be distinct from past government interventions. What he doesn’t realize is that those predictions made long ago about Social Security and Medicare still apply today. If a personal trainer tells you that you shouldn’t lift a 100 lb. barbell and you do so without problem, does that mean you should ignore his advice when he warns you against lifting the 200 lb. barbell? The answer is no. It does not logically follow that because the trainer was wrong about the 100 lb. barbell, that he will consequently be wrong about your ability to lift the 200 lb. barbell.

When it comes to government intervention, Medicare and Social Security represent the 100 lb. barbell, and Obamacare represents the 200 lb. one. There is simply no guarantee that because we have so far managed to survive the existing government intrusions into the market place that we will be able to do so indefinitely, and thus, Kristoff’s use of history to predict the future is misguided.