Senate Leader Harry Reid, in the fight of his life for re-election in Nevada and hated by the far left wing, has promised to bring their pet project, a $1 trillion government-run health insurance program, to the floor of the Senate in the health care bill. Now they love him, and the White House has been painted into a major corner on this one.
The problem is that the only senators supporting this massive new entitlement program are either (a) Democrats scared to death of what the acidic left (e.g. MoveOn.org, DailyKos) will do to them if they don’t give in to their demands, and (b) diehard left-wingers who are members of the former (e.g. Chuck Schumer, Barbara Boxer).
These supporters of government insurance are running around with these arguments:
- This new government insurance program is just like Medicare, and that works great. Well, Medicare is broke. So it doesn’t really work all that great. But it’s true that it works in that it provides low cost insurance to the highest cost patients. But doesn’t that strike you as a little strange? A big reason is that the health care system shifts the cost of those patients to the rest of us who buy regular health insurance. Get rid of the rest of us, and there is no one to shift the cost to. That’s when this whole thing ceases to “work”.
- But we’ll just take all of the profits from the health insurance companies and that will take care of those costs. If you took every dollar of profit out of those rapacious, greedy health insurance companies, that would pay for four days of American health care. Four days. And if you think health insurance premiums are bad now (and they are), just wait until there is ZERO competition.
- But polls show everyone loves government insurance. That’s what happens when you collude with drug companies and offer to exempt them from the effects of your program if they’ll run millions of dollars in ads to help pass it. Plus, I’m all for representative democracy, but we elect our leaders to look around corners and think about the effects of our initiatives, not just blindly do whatever we tell our pollsters sounds sorta good at the moment.
- We can’t afford not to do this. We need to be a civilized country and have great health care. Actually, we already have a world class health care system that few complain about. But we have a horrible way of paying for it, pricing it and incentivizing innovation and efficiency. Health care is the only consumer staple where pricing is opaque and secretive, and where we use insurance to pay for routine, predictable expenses. Go read about that Atlantic piece by David Goldhill, a lifelong Democrat — his article will make you think twice about the sustainability of either our current course, or the proposed reforms.
The bottom line on health care: every single Democrat and Republican of a moderate or conservative point of view understands that we can’t possibly afford a new $1 trillion dollar entitlement program. Our government is flat broke, and we are talking about putting a massive new burden on the job creators in this economy. Are we crazy?
I was annoyed with President Bush for his lack of discipline when it came to federal spending. The national debt increased tremendously in his eight years. But on the other hand, President Obama has been in office for 10 months, and has already increased the national debt by 9% — $1.325 trillion dollars. At this rate, if government insurance were to pass, President Obama would nearly double it with $9.3 trillion in new debt in his four year term.
This spending spree has got to stop. This isn’t about opposing a Democratic president. It’s about opposing unsustainable practices for our country.
I think we need health insurance reform in a big way. I’m working on a post with some of the best ideas I’ve heard about fixing our system. I’m by no means a health care expert, but I’ll be the first to say that we need to do SOMETHING.
Now, here’s something new.
I know from the Google stats and from some of you e-mailing me that we have a lot of “silent readers” of this blog, and I think you all have a lot more to contribute to the conversation than you have so far. So we’re going to hold a little contest to try to draw a few of you out of your shells.
Answer the following question with a comment here on the blog, and you’ll be entered in a contest for a copy of Who Killed Health Care: America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem by Professor Regina Herzlinger (paper or Kindle edition, your choice). This book is sitting on my Kindle in the to-read pile. I’m quite sure I don’t agree with every one of her recommendations, but it looks like an excellent read.
So, here’s the question…
What is the best idea you’ve heard for fixing the health care system? If it’s something I’ve disagreed with here, go ahead and make your case for it — but I’m also hoping to hear about other ideas that are sustainable, affordable and will produce real results — bending the cost curve while making insurance affordable and accessible for more Americans.