For reasons both practical and philosophical, Warren and her technocratic ilk might benefit from some humility as they seek to remake the health care system—and the nation.

By one count, Sen. Elizabeth Warren used 9,275 words in her health care plan (that is, her original health care plan, not the one she released two weeks later, to overcome the political obstacles she created in the first version). Of that lengthy verbiage, one word stands out: “Expert” appears no fewer than 18 times in the document.

According to Warren, “the experts conclude” that her plan would cost $20.5 trillion over a decade; other “top experts…examine[d] options” to pay for that new federal spending. She cited experts in triplicate for emphasis, noting “the conclusions of expert after expert after expert” that a single-payer health care system can cover all Americans while lowering costs. Warren even pledged that “no for-profit insurance company should be able to stop anyone from seeing the expert…they need.”

Therein lies her biggest problem: In farming out every policy issue for “experts” to solve, Warren effectively insults the intelligence of American voters—telling them they’re not smart enough to solve their own problems, or even to understand the details of her proposed solutions.

‘Experts’ Couldn’t Even Build a Website

The Massachusetts senator’s reliance on experts jives with her campaign’s unofficial slogan. No matter the issue, Warren has a plan for that—blessed by the experts—to enact her agenda. But as Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” For reasons both practical and philosophical, Warren and her technocratic ilk might benefit from some humility as they seek to remake the health care system—and the nation.

Six years ago this fall, the failure of healthcare.gov provided a searing example of the limits of expertise. After years of planning and countless federal dollars, what Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called a “debacle” played out in slow-motion on national television. Half a century on from Halberstam’s best and brightest, Barack Obama had to concede that government was “generally not very efficient” at procurement and technology.

Another politician who invoked “experts” regarding health policy, Max Baucus, did so in August 2010. Then the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus said he did not bother to read the Obamacare legislation he helped to draft because “It takes a real expert to know what the heck it is. We hire experts.”

Nearly four years later, one of those experts—Yvette Fontenot, who worked on Baucus’ staff during the Obamacare debate—admitted that when drafting the law’s employer mandate, “we didn’t have a very good handle on how difficult operationalizing the provision would be at that time.” Here again, remaking a health system approaching $4 trillion in size brings unintended consequences lurking at every corner.

Yet Warren and her “experts” see no such reason for caution. One of the authors of her health care paper, former Obama administration official Donald Berwick, once said, “I want to see that in the city of San Diego or Seattle there are exactly as many MRI units as needed when operating at full capacity. Not less and not more.” Implicit in his statement: Federal officials, sitting at desks in Washington, or at Medicare’s headquarters in Baltimore, can quantify and assess the “right” number of machines, facilities, and personnel in every community across the land.

Liberals Act Like Voters Are Stupid

A belief that administrators should, let alone can, effectively micromanage an entire health system requires no small amount of hubris. Indeed, Berwick said in a 2008 speech that “I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.”

In this vein, Berwick echoed his Obama administration colleague Peter Orszag, who in advocating for an unelected board to make recommendations reducing health spending—a change included in Obamacare, but repealed by Congress last year—argued that “we might be a healthier democracy if we were slightly less democratic.”

From the 2004 work “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” to the post-mortems after the last presidential election, liberals continue to question why some households vote against their supposed financial interests. The “expert” mentality—as Orszag wrote, “relying more on…depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions”—likely plays a role, as by its very nature and through its soft paternalism it disenfranchises Americans.

For instance, studies suggest most low-income individuals do not particularly value Medicaid coverage, yet neither Warren nor others on the left spend much time debating whether expanding health insurance represents the best way to help the poor. As Reagan would note, they’re from the government, and they’re here to help.

Warren thinks that to win the presidency, she must convince voters she has a plan for everything. In reality, her campaign’s hopes may rest instead on developing a plan to narrow the growing gap between the rulers—her beloved “experts”—and the ruled.