Paul Hsieh, MD reminds us of how, in both the House and Senate health care bills the so-called health care “reform” will further empower government officials to tell us what insurance we can and cannot have:
Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an “acceptable” plan. The health insurance czar would be in charge of a new bureaucracy called the “Health Choice Administration,” which would regulate what prices insurance companies could charge for policies, who they must cover, and what benefits they must offer. …
To add insult to injury, President Obama has repeatedly promised:
If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.It turns out what he really meant was: “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep it — but only if my czar lets you.” …
When an insurance czar requires everyone to purchase health insurance, then sets the prices and benefits independent of a free market, it turns insurance from a system of voluntarily shared risk into a thinly disguised form of government welfare.
Read the whole article at Pajamas Media: America Doesn’t Need a Health Insurance ‘Czar’.
Update: Here’s another good article about the Health Care Choices Administration (sounds Orwellian, no):
A czar to drive doctor-patient decisions (Expect the best medicine that bureaucracy will allow).
