Health Care: Power Trip

Because seizing control of the energy, automotive, and financial sectors of the economy evidently just whets the appetite, Washington is now hell-bent on further nationalizing the country's health care apparatus as well. House Democrats have introduced a bill of gargantuan proportions and hypodermic invasiveness, which they and the White House insist must be passed by late afternoon tomorrow, if not yesterday.

The measure would force companies to provide health insurance or pay penalties equivalent to 8 percent of each worker's salary. It would force individuals to accept coverage or pay 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income. It would create yet another government-backed insurance program, set up to siphon market share from private insurance companies by underpricing them and, most likely, operating at a deficit. If a foreign corporation pulled the same stunt, D.C. would run to the World Trade Organization screaming about unfair trade practices. When Washington does it, it's "reform."

Democrats are saying -- with a straight face -- that vastly expanding government subsidies for health care will lower expenditures. But at the same time, they propose $500 million in tax hikes -- which will go about halfway toward meeting the $1 trillion their legislation would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, probably cost.

In the meantime, they propose sharp cuts in Medicare -- an implicit admission that Washington will begin to refuse coverage for elderly Americans when government bureaucrats decide the treatment is not worth the price.

That, of course, is what the ostensibly callous private insurance companies are accused of doing, and it raises an obvious question about the public insurance program: How is it going to be any better? If it is going to control costs, then it will have to be just as hard-nosed and thin-lipped as private insurers. If it is not going to control costs, then what's the point?

The point, advocates say, is to ensure every American has health coverage. But that could be achieved with comparative ease and simplicity by providing tax credits and cash vouchers for the purchase of insurance policies to anyone who does not have coverage already. The downside to such a proposal -- as far as House Democrats are concerned -- is that it would shore up rather than subvert the private sector.

They prefer their own bill, largely modeled on the Massachusetts approach Republican Gov. Mitt Romney signed into law three years ago. Since then, health care spending by the Bay State has jumped nearly 30 percent, the program runs a deficit, consumer freedom has diminished, and the state still hasn't achieved universal coverage. But at least the politicians are running the show -- and for them that's ultimately what matters most.