Sheldon Richman makes the case in The Freeman:
Opponents of (more) government control of health care and health insurance are breathing a sigh of relief after Tuesday’s upset senatorial election in Massachusetts. But now that the celebrations are subsiding, I feel compelled to warn that the most perilous days may lie ahead. …
In place of 2,000-page omnibus monstrosities, we are likely to see a series of micro “reforms” — that is, government interventions — that may well garner bipartisan support. The new buzzword on Capitol Hill is “incrementalism.” This is a strategy to break the big House and Senate bills into several small ones. …
… those micro bills are unlikely to be the needed repeals of the government’s impediments to free competition, such as the ban on interstate insurance commerce, the Food and Drug Administration, the patent system, and the tax-code bias toward employer-purchased insurance. …
… since the series of small bills won’t look like an overambitious program to reinvent 16 percent of the U.S. economy in one unreadable fell swoop, much of the congressional opposition could be defused.
Richman predicts the bills will include guaranteed issue (must cover everyone, regardless of health status) and community rating (charge everyone the same premium, or almost the same). Of course, these controls provide a rationalization for mandatory insurance, as otherwise people can wait until they get sick to buy a policy. In all, bad news. Richman also notes that some Republicans are amenable to guaranteed issue.
Read the whole article: The Goal Is Freedom: The Snare of Incremental Heath Care “Reform”.
(Via Scott Keyes)
