The China President Obama Didn't See

Dissident intellectuals have been attracted to Christianity.

Beijing

In the northeast part of this city, not far from the old Friendship Hotel, stands a boxy little cinema specializing in anime. A nondescript building on a nondescript thoroughfare, it's hardly a place a tourist would notice, much less a visiting president. Yet had Barack Obama wanted to understand something of the real China, his time would have been better spent here than at the various state dinners, Forbidden City photo-ops, and carefully managed town-hall events that consumed the balance of his trip this week.

At 10 a.m. Sunday, more than 500 members of Shouwang church gathered at the cinema for a service. Shouwang, founded in 1993 by pastor Jin Tianming, is one of the city's largest unregistered churches and counts around 800 regular members. But until last weekend, they had never once been able to meet in such large numbers in an indoor space in Beijing.

Shouwang is what is known in China as a "house" church, meaning that it is an unregistered entity in a country where all religious groups are supposed to report to the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Officially, the Chinese government counts some 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics belonging to registered churches, which proscribe evangelical activity and preach a patriotic dogma.

But Chinese and foreign observers alike believe the number of Chinese belonging to underground churches may now exceed 100 million people. That figure has grown rapidly as more and more Chinese, particularly well-educated city dwellers, turn away from Communist Party atheism.

Life has never been easy for the underground churches, and recently it has gotten a lot harder. This is the result, according to the Christian charity group China Aid, of a state directive handed down in August. Why do China's powerful leaders fear these churches, most of which steer clear of politics? It may be that they have grown increasingly paranoid about the political power of religion given the unrest they have faced in Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang. Or it could be because dissident intellectuals, such as jailed human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, have sometimes tended toward Christianity.

Whatever the reason, Shouwang in recent weeks has been forced to hold its services outdoors, including during a snowstorm, as attempts to find an indoor space were repeatedly rebuffed. Twenty minutes into Sunday's service, Pastor Tianming announced that "some of our brothers and sisters are being held at their homes and have not been able to come to church. But we are all one body in Christ, so we will wait for them to start the service."

After another hour of singing and praying, the congregation suddenly broke into applause—one of the detained members had apparently talked his way out and arrived. The service got underway; by the time it ended a second detained elder had arrived. The previous Sunday, it was Pastor Tianming who had been detained.

This story is hardly unique to Beijing. Earlier this month, police sealed the doors of the Wanbang church in Shanghai, scattering its congregation of 2,000 people. In Shanxi province the leaders of one of the country's largest house churches, with dozens of branches and tens of thousands of members, have been arrested in a crackdown that has worsened since September. Shouwang itself would not likely have obtained permission to hold its services at the cinema had Mr. Obama's trip not given authorities a reason to avoid ruffling feathers.

Now Mr. Obama is gone, after a visit that was conspicuous for its attentiveness to the sensibilities of China's leaders. In their quest for stability and "harmony," these rulers continue to roll back basic liberties. Shuttering underground churches is part of the trend.

But freedom of faith is something not even history's most repressive governments have ever been fully able to snuff out: not the Romans in their suppression of the earliest Christians; not the communists in their efforts to substitute History for God; not Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong or Kim Il Sung, who attempted to substitute themselves for God. So while Shouwang has no place to meet this coming Sunday, the church will still be there, only more deeply steeled in its faith. This is the side of China—the one Mr. Obama opted not to see—that will ultimately determine its future.

Ms. Hook is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Asia.

The Lords of Entitlement

Every medical insurance decision will be subject to rationing by politics.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi defied policy logic and public opinion late Saturday night, ramming through the House a nearly 2,000-page health-care leviathan that counts as the biggest expansion of the federal government since the New Deal. As President Obama likes to say, this was a "teachable moment" about our current government.

The vote was 220 to 215, with 39 House Democrats joining all but one Republican in opposition. Mrs. Pelosi had to cajole and bribe her way to the magic 218, and the list of her promises must be stacked to the ceiling.

The lone Republican, Joseph Cao, represents a Democratic-leaning Louisiana district and extracted a promise that Mr. Obama would increase Medicaid payments to his state, and even then he only voted after Democrats had already hit 218. Let no one suggest this was the "bipartisan" health reform that Mr. Obama has long promised.

The bill is instead a breathtaking display of illiberal ambition, intended to make the middle class more dependent on government through the umbilical cord of "universal health care." It creates a vast new entitlement, financed by European levels of taxation on business and individuals. The 20% corner of Medicare open to private competition is slashed, while fiscally strapped states are saddled with new Medicaid burdens. The insurance industry will have to vet every policy with Washington, which will regulate who it must cover, what it can offer, and how much it can charge.

We have little sympathy for the insurers, or for that matter most of the other medical providers who signed on to this process only to claim now to be appalled by the result. The insurance lobby—led by Aetna CEO Ron Williams—made the Faustian bet that it could trade new regulations for more new subsidized customers who would face a tax penalty if they didn't buy their insurance. The Pelosi bill includes the regulation but guts the tax penalty because it's unpopular. Insurers will thus have to cover more sick people with fewer dollars, as healthy folk opt out of coverage until they are sick.

This writing was on the wall months ago, but the insurers chose to play an inside game rather than shape public opinion. Judging by their weekend statement—criticizing the House bill but vowing to seek "bipartisan" reform—they will now throw themselves at the mercy of the Senate. Good luck with that. The real victims are their customers, most of whom will pay more for insurance as the new mandates raise costs.

Mrs. Pelosi's craftiest political turn was a last-minute compromise to strip federal funds from insurance plans that cover abortions. The deal—negotiated by Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak and supported by the National Right to Life Committee—gave cover to 40-some Democrats to support the larger bill.

However, as subsidized costs soar, government will have no choice but to ration medical care, starting with the aged and grievously ill. Is pre-natal life more valuable than the elderly? We're reminded of the way pro-lifers supported Anthony Kennedy over Laurence Silberman for the Supreme Court in 1987 merely because Mr. Kennedy was a Catholic who claimed to personally oppose abortion. Mr. Stupak played the right-to-lifers like a Stradavarius.

The real importance of the abortion uproar is as preview of the politics that will dominate every medical coverage issue if ObamaCare becomes law. Every decision of what to insure or not—when an MRI can be used, or whether a stage-four breast cancer patient can get Avastin or some future expensive drug—will become subject to political intervention over moral disputes or budget constraints. Heretofore, these decisions have largely been made between a doctor and patient. This is the real "right to life" issue.

Perhaps the most unsurprising news in this drama was the collapse of the Blue Dog "deficit hawks." Enough of them always cave in the end to give Mrs. Pelosi her way. It's nonetheless worth noting the surrender of that most vocal scourge of deficits, Tennessee's Jim Cooper, who voted aye on grounds that the bill can be improved in the Senate.

But Max Baucus's Finance Committee bill includes a similar gimmick of making the numbers look good by using 10 years of new taxes to finance only seven years of spending (six in the House). The deficits explode in the second decade and beyond in both bills.

The House also contains a new government long-term insurance program that starts collecting premiums in 2011 but doesn't starting paying benefits until 2016 and then runs out of money in 2029. North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad called it "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of" in an interview with the Washington Post in late October. Mr. Cooper has with a single vote made his entire career irrelevant.

Yet 39 other Democrats were given a pass on the vote, as the leadership knows how unpopular this bill is in most of America. They know this legislation is not the result of some national consensus in favor of expanding state power. Its passage was possible only because of temporary liberal majorities that are intent on fulfilling their dreams of a cradle-to-grave entitlement state. If they lose Blue Dog seats, or even their majority, in the short term, so be it. As the party of government, Democrats believe they will benefit in the long run from a much larger government.

Unless the Senate has an epiphany of common sense, Americans will be paying the bills for this willful exercise for generations to come.

The Worst Bill Ever

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

•The spending surge. The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate. Most of the money goes into government-run "exchanges" where people earning between 150% and 400% of the poverty level—that is, up to about $96,000 for a family of four in 2016—could buy coverage at heavily subsidized rates, tied to income. The government would pay for 93% of insurance costs for a family making $42,000, 72% for another making $78,000, and so forth.

At least at first, these benefits would be offered only to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses with 100 or fewer workers. The taxpayer costs would be far higher if not for this "firewall"—which is sure to cave in when people see the deal their neighbors are getting on "free" health care. Mrs. Pelosi knows this, like everyone else in Washington.

Even so, the House disguises hundreds of billions of dollars in additional costs with budget gimmicks. It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that.

• Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare—now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.

As for Medicaid, the House will expand eligibility to everyone below 150% of the poverty level, meaning that some 15 million new people will be added to the rolls as private insurance gets crowded out at a cost of $425 billion. A decade from now more than a quarter of the population will be on a program originally intended for poor women, children and the disabled.

Even though the House will assume 91% of the "matching rate" for this joint state-federal program—up from today's 57%—governors would still be forced to take on $34 billion in new burdens when budgets from Albany to Sacramento are in fiscal collapse. Washington's budget will collapse too, if anything like the House bill passes.

• European levels of taxation. All told, the House favors $572 billion in new taxes, mostly by imposing a 5.4-percentage-point "surcharge" on joint filers earning over $1 million, $500,000 for singles. This tax will raise the top marginal rate to 45% in 2011 from 39.6% when the Bush tax cuts expire—not counting state income taxes and the phase-out of certain deductions and exemptions. The burden will mostly fall on the small businesses that have organized as Subchapter S or limited liability corporations, since the truly wealthy won't have any difficulty sheltering their incomes.

This surtax could hit ever more earners because, like the alternative minimum tax, it isn't indexed for inflation. Yet it still won't be nearly enough. Even if Congress had confiscated 100% of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion. When Democrats end up soaking the middle class, perhaps via the European-style value-added tax that Mrs. Pelosi has endorsed, they'll claim the deficits that they created made them do it.

Under another new tax, businesses would have to surrender 8% of their payroll to government if they don't offer insurance or pay at least 72.5% of their workers' premiums, which eat into wages. Such "play or pay" taxes always become "pay or pay" and will rise over time, with severe consequences for hiring, job creation and ultimately growth. While the U.S. already has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world, Democrats are on the way to creating a high structural unemployment rate, much as Europe has done by expanding its welfare states.

Meanwhile, a tax equal to 2.5% of adjusted gross income will also be imposed on some 18 million people who CBO expects still won't buy insurance in 2019. Democrats could make this penalty even higher, but that is politically unacceptable, or they could make the subsidies even higher, but that would expose the (already ludicrous) illusion that ObamaCare will reduce the deficit.

• The insurance takeover. A new "health choices commissioner" will decide what counts as "essential benefits," which all insurers will have to offer as first-dollar coverage. Private insurers will also be told how much they are allowed to charge even as they will have to offer coverage at virtually the same price to anyone who applies, regardless of health status or medical history.

The cost of insurance, naturally, will skyrocket. The insurer WellPoint estimates based on its own market data that some premiums in the individual market will triple under these new burdens. The same is likely to prove true for the employer-sponsored plans that provide private coverage to about 177 million people today. Over time, the new mandates will apply to all contracts, including for the large businesses currently given a safe harbor from bureaucratic tampering under a 1974 law called Erisa.

The political incentive will always be for government to expand benefits and reduce cost-sharing, trampling any chance of giving individuals financial incentives to economize on care. Essentially, all insurers will become government contractors, in the business of fulfilling political demands: There will be no such thing as "private" health insurance.

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All of this is intentional, even if it isn't explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of "change," but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi's handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR's National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.