Say Anything Blog

Obama is considering Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee to be his replacement pick for Tom Daschle:

The White House and Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee are in serious discussions about the Health and Human Services Secretary position; Bredesen is being vetted for the job. Some activists and health care experts are very anxious because they know that Bredesen, in the lingo of the field, is a cost-cutter, rather than an all-access guy. But his courting by the White House might not be as surprising as it first seems:  Obama’s health care plan was always predicated on cost control and a little less than universal.

By way of illustrating Bredesen’s success at implementing government-run health care in his home state, here’s an NPR article (NPR not exactly being a bastion of anti-socialized medicine sentiment) talking about hundreds of thousands of people being dropped from the state’s health care program to cut costs:

Last year, Tennessee dropped some 200,000 people from TennCare, its health care plan for the poor and uninsured, and reduced benefits for hundreds of thousands more. The impact is being felt in places like Cocke County, one of the state’s poorest. . . .

...when the TennCare cuts happened, many expected an immediate surge in uninsured patients showing up in the ER. That didn’t happen.

Instead, the growth has been more insidious.

“It’s happening slowly,” he says during a brief lull between patients. “I’ve been here long enough that I have lots of recurring patients. And I know in the past they have had TennCare. And today they are listed as private pay—in other words, no insurance. You know, little by little it’s happening, and it’s getting worse.”

As a fiscal conservative, I’ve got to say that hearing Obama talk about a nationalized health care system focused on cost cutting is more than a little chilling.  When the government gets involved in something like health care we lose some of our choice.  Government involvement distorts the market, and inflates prices.  If we get a nationalized health care system, most of us aren’t going to be able to opt out of it either by design of the law or because of the government’s distortions of the health care markets.

So ultimately most, if not all, of us will be stuck with a crappy health care system that will inevitably run over its budget prompting policy makers to be eternally trying to cut costs.  Meaning things like waiting lists.  Denied coverage for certain procedures.  And perhaps even rules about people with certain health habits (fatties, smokers, etc.) not being able to get coverage.

We might get universal access, or something close to it, but what good is lowering the quality of our health care to the lowest common denominator for the sake of universal access.