Steve Jobs introduces the iPad and Barack Obama signs a health care law only days apart. Maybe the proximity of these two will remind the voters what a real game changer looks like.

Just think how the price will drop when the law says you have to buy one!

Andrew Leonard in his column at Salon.com calls our ObamaPad video clever but also “so very dumb.”  I would like to defend it.

He writes that to-date, health insurers have done a terrible job of delivering affordable healthcare. Continuing the analogy from the video, I would ask him what kind of iPad would Apple sell if each state had its own laws on what kind of iPad you could sell? And nobody from out of state could buy it? How innovative would the navigator apps be if John Edwards could sue the programmers for giving a wrong address like he sued healthcare providers?

Mr. Leonard asks us to think of health insurance not as a product, but as “essential infrastructure upon which a healthy, prosperous civilization can be built.” Admittedly it would be nice if health insurance were an entitlement described in the constitution, and if the founding fathers had figured out a way it could be done with fairness and efficiency. But it is not. The constitution does come close in the preamble to defining the issue with the words “provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare.” Note the distinction however between “provide” and “promote.” The argument that you must provide universal healthcare to promote general welfare is weak.

A more clever argument is to say that “provide for the common defense” includes defense against disease or death by lack of access to healthcare. There’s a good argument to implementing healthcare as we implement the armed services. But remember, there aren’t two armies, one for the regular people and a better one for members of congress. If the plan is to give me the same gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond breast pin Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan that we buy for our government employees, I would gladly accept that. Or if our representatives would get the same shoddy product they are trying to press on us, then I would grudgingly accept that. But you can not argue that health care is an entitlement and then allow some people to get a better version of it than me.

So lacking a constitutional mandate for health care, we have what we have now: companies in the business of selling a product called health insurance. The point of the video is that if you want the best product, you don’t want the government telling you how to make it, or what goes in it, or how much to sell it for.

UPDATE: The video was picked up by Lucianne.com and GlenBeck 912 Project. And thank you for everyone who is sending it around via Twitter, FaceBook, and e-mail.
UPDATE: Thank you Glen Morrissey at HotAir.com and Scott Baker at Breitbart TV for linking.
UPDATE: Thanks, Andrew Leonard, for the Salon.com article. I believe you are wrong and the video is not dumb, but I can’t thank you enough for calling it so.