Government Health Care Might Be Off The Table, But Government Health Reform Isn’t
And one is as bad as the other, because they both lead to the same place: Dependence and government control.
Charles Krauthammer explains:
To win back the vast constituency that has insurance, is happy with it, and is mightily resisting the fatal lures of Obamacare, the president will in the end simply impose heavy regulations on the insurance companies that will make what you already have secure, portable and imperishable: no policy cancellations, no preexisting condition requirements, perhaps even a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
Nirvana. But wouldn’t this bankrupt the insurance companies? Of course it would. There will be only one way to make this work: Impose an individual mandate. Force the 18 million Americans between 18 and 34 who (often quite rationally) forgo health insurance to buy it. This will create a huge new pool of customers who rarely get sick but will be paying premiums every month. And those premiums will subsidize nirvana health insurance for older folks.
Net result? Another huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old, the now-routine specialty of the baby boomers; an end to the dream of imposing European-style health care on the United States; and a president who before Christmas will wave his pen, proclaim victory and watch as the newest conventional wisdom reaffirms his divinity.
I don’t think the transfer of wealth from younger generations to older generations is even the biggest problem with this. Expanding the pool of insured and raising premiums are only stop-gap measures. In the long run, mandating that insurance companies insure everyone and capping the amount insurance companies can require the insured to pay is a recipe for the collapse of the insurance industry as a whole.
As premiums go up more and more people will be pushed onto government health care. As more people get on government health care, the closer we’ll get to an entirely nationalized health care system.
The Democrats may not be getting the government health care they want immediately, but if they get their health insurance “reform” passed they’ll be making government health care inevitable.
