1. The bill coddles insurance companies with the individual mandate, the employer mandate,subsidies, regulations and limits on competition. [1]

2. So-called “reform” is a national version of Massachusetts’ “Romney Care”, which has failed. [11]

3. The Democrats’ Health-Care Proposals Promise To Entrench The Status Quo. [13]

4. Health care is not a right, or is it a privilege. We have the right *to seek* health care.[3]

5. Health care reform will increase your insurance premiums. [2]

6. Middle-class taxes will increase. [2]

7. Many people will not be able to keep their current insurance. [2]

8. It will not reduce the budget deficit. [2]

9. It’s wrong to force people to pay for other people’s health care or insurance. That’s what charity is for.

10. Insurance price controls hurt the sick [4]

11. It’s wrong to force people to buy a product.

12. It’s wrong to make people’s current insurance policy (or any insurance policy) illegal. [12]

14. Mandating employer health care is more poison, not an antidote. [5]

15. Mandatory insurance punishes low-wage workers with high marginal tax rates, which keeps them poor. [6]

16. Medicaid is a fraud-ridden poverty trap that provides lousy care and increases everyone’s insurance premiums. [7] Don’t expand it. Why not let taxpayers *choose* which charities their tax dollars fund? [8]

17. Coverage is NOT care: Having insurance does not mean you get needed medical care. [9]

18. Doctors will quit, or substitute the judgment of government bureaucrats for their own medical expertise [10]

Instead, try some free-market reforms. For example, read “Yes, Mr. President: A Free Market Can Fix Health Care” at healthcare.Cato.org or “Real reform: free-markets” at PatientPowerNow.org.

=== References ===

[1] Insurers Gone Wild, Jacob Sullum, Reason.com

[2] “Five Health Reform Whoppers” by Michael Tanner at AOLnews.

[3] Health Care Is Not a Privilege … Nor Is It a Right, Brian Schwartz; Is Health care a right?, by Walter Williams; Health Care is Not a Right, by Leonard Piekoff

[4] http://www.patientpowernow.org/2010/01/15/insurance-price-controls-hurt-sick

[5] Denver Daily News, Aug 21, 2009, Brian Schwartz

[6] “Individual Mandate Would Impose High Implicit Taxes on Low-Wage Workers,” Michael Cannon at Kaiser Health News

[7] <http://www.patientpowernow.org/2009/10/30/medicare-medicaid-fraud-exceeds-insurance-company-profits/>,
<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6841>,
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137487987962873.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>,
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aeGBzglj2iyY>

[8] Taxpayer Choice: A Solution to the Crisis of the Welfare State, by John Goodman

[9] http://www.patientpowernow.org/tag/coverage-is-not-care

[10] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-your-doctor-getting-ready-to-shrug

[11] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamacare-a-national-version-of-romneycare

[12] http://www.patientpowernow.org/tag/illegal-insurance, and this video:
http://www.patientpowernow.org/2009/06/25/obama-care

[13] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/24/opinion/main5109914.shtml

Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) is calling for residents of Michigan to forgo eating meat in observance of “Michigan Meatout Day.”

Am I the only one who finds this slightly creepy? Sure, go ahead and eat a vegetarian or a vegan diet if you’d like. Try to sell me on the virtue of a soy burger as a replacement for ground beef. I wouldn’t even mind a lecture from the governor if the two of us were sitting down over a couple of beers (is that still allowed?) , if she were talking as a private individual.

An official proclamation, as meaningless as that is, crosses over the line and gets government in the business of deciding what goes in my body and what doesn’t.  But expect more of the same nanny-state nagging when governments take on an ever-larger role in paying for health care services.

While the supremacy of the national government over the states is widely cited as an objection to such measures, states have successfully repelled other initiatives, such as the REAL ID act.

There are at least two advantages of relying on states rather than the national government. One is that any damage from bad legislation is limited to that state. Another is that states can benefit from watching for “what works” in other states. Wohlgemuth, for example, says that Texas is a model for tort reform. Despite the best efforts of academics and policy experts, the real-life results don’t always come out as predicted. Sometimes they end up worse; sometimes they end up better. We would benefit from smaller-scale approaches rather than a mentality that says Congress will fix something for everyone.

But going it alone by resorting to the controversial reconciliation process may prove politically costly for Democrats. After all, a majority of Americans oppose their health reform proposal. The latest CNN poll showed that only 25% of Americans like the president’s plan.

If the Democrats pass some version of reform — a big if — Republicans could find themselves in a position to turn public displeasure into electoral success. The GOP should seize the opportunity by pledging to repeal ObamaCare if they take control of Congress this fall.

Not only would such a strategy represent good politics, it would be good policy, as ObamaCare is poised to bankrupt the country.

After all, the tax increases go into effect this year but the benefits do not kick in until 2014 or later.

The president puts the cost of his reform plan at $950 billion over 10 years. But the eventual price tag will likely exceed $2 trillion. And that’s just the cost to taxpayers. ObamaCare will force ordinary patients to pay ever more for health care.

Take the guaranteed issue provision — a cornerstone of the Democrats’ reform plan that would bar insurers from denying coverage to individuals because of pre-existing conditions or health status. Although popular, guaranteed issue is expensive. States that have implemented this regulation have seen premiums rise 227%.

That shouldn’t be surprising. If insurance is available on demand, only people who have an acute need for it will pay premiums. Consequently, the insurance pool will be composed exclusively of sick people with high medical costs. Insurers will have to jack up premiums to cover the cost of treating these folks.

The Democrats’ plan attempts to balance the cost of guaranteed issue with an individual mandate requiring all Americans to obtain insurance. Supporters of the mandate claim that it will lower overall health costs by drawing everyone into the insurance pool. Premiums from the young and healthy — many of whom previously went without policies or might have waited until they got sick to buy them — can subsidize care for the aged and infirm.

But the individual mandate will not lower health costs — it will raise them.

People generally go without insurance because it’s too expensive — or because they’d rather spend their money on other goods or services. Simply passing a law requiring people to buy insurance won’t make policies more affordable.

By the time the mandate is in full effect, the average individual insurance policy is expected to cost about $5,000. The fines for noncompliance are far less, $695 or 2.5% of income, whichever is higher, starting in 2016.

For most healthy individuals, it would make more sense to forgo insurance and pay the fine than to shell out thousands of dollars a year for an individual policy.

Further, if they became ill, they could get a policy right away because of guaranteed issue.

With the young and healthy exiting the insurance pool, once again only the sick will remain. Premiums will spiral ever higher.

In fact, according to Milliman, an actuarial consultancy, combining guaranteed issue with an individual mandate could achieve the “the opposite of what was intended: an increase in cost for health insurance and in the number of uninsured Americans.”

When President Obama set out to reform the health care system, he named cutting costs as one of his primary goals. His proposal would accomplish just the opposite, raising the cost of care for Americans. The president may come to regret trying to force his unpopular reform package through — starting on Election Day.

Nowadays, with Medicaid going bankrupt, the handwriting is on the wall. More likely sooner than later, Medicaid will be seriously means-tested to eliminate the program’s huge income and asset loopholes. If it survives at all, it will become the kind of program most people thought it always was: a financial floor protecting the truly needy from health and LTC devastation.

John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a health care expert with far more years in the field than I, recently blogged about some of the ideas put forth by Republicans in their health care meeting with President Obama. The idea that Goodman disagrees so vehemently with is to allow all out-of-pocket spending on health care to be deductible. This, proponents (like me) argue, would ultimately undermine the third-party-payer system of health care in this country because employees would no longer have the incentive to rely on their employers for health care and would instead take the additional pay and enter the individual market, more than likely adapting health savings accounts and other consumer-driven health care products in large numbers.

Goodman argues that eliminating taxes health care expenses would create a situation in which “government would be paying almost half the cost…” With this subsidy, health care spending would rise dramatically. He instead argues for equalizing the tax treatment of health care with other goods — an ideal solution that I agree with — but I doubt that Congress or the American people would go along with such a massive tax hike unless tax rates were lowered…and you get the picture. Very complex and not likely to happen.

So, I remain supportive of eliminating taxes on health care. Why? Well, first and foremost, even if you are being subsidized to the tune of 50% for health care, you still control the money and will work to keep costs down. Pricing will become a part of the health care industry in a way that it is not today because of the third-party system. Also, the individual market will grow, thus making that a more viable proposition and keeping costs down and giving millions of Americans greater control of their health care (no more remaining stuck in a job just because of health care). Lastly, consumer-driven health care like HSA’s will take off and flourish. These all seem like good things to me. Besides, do you really trust politicians to not cave into special interests by exempting health insurance from taxation as we did in New Mexico (NM’s gross receipts tax still hits certain health care costs like deductibles and co-pays).

Ending taxation of health care costs seems to have more benefits than drawbacks. Maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?

I wonder however, if President Obama realized the Pennsylvania already has a slacker mandate (in fact, up to age 29); state lawmakers enacted it in 2008.

In testimony to both the state House and Senate Appropriations Committees in February, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario noted that very few young adults have been enrolled under the new mandate. Ario commented, as summarized by Pennsylvania Legislative Services (subscription), that:

• The cost to insure young adults on their parents’ plan was about the same as if they bought their own plan.
• “Low-risk” young adults would buy their own plan (or remain uninsured), leaving only high-risk cases looking to the slacker mandate–and insurers were naturally unwilling to give coverage to high-risk young adults as the same rates as children.
• The failure of the slacker mandate to reduce the number of uninsured is “generally symptomatic of the greater healthcare problem.”

That is pretty much what  in the Commonwealth Foundation predicted two years ago:

SB 1453 [the slacker mandate], however, ignores the primary reason why young adults often go without insurance—the high cost of coverage. This is especially true considering that most young adults use very little health care. …

Instead of more mandates, lawmakers should adopt reforms that allow individuals to purchase low-cost, mandate-lite insurance. Another alternative would be to allow individuals to opt out or waive certain coverage mandates to reduce the cost of their insurance. … The only way to substantially reduce the cost of health care is to put individuals in charge, not government bureaucrats. This means eliminating many of Pennsylvania’s costly health insurance mandates, not adding to them. Eliminating the burden of health care mandates will lower the cost of health care, provide more insurance to more individuals, and restore personal choice to citizens.

Samaritan’s Ministries is an organization that helps its members pay cash for services. National Public Radio recently published  a short story about the organization. It is a faith-based effort, not only in that participants are Christians. An insurance company has a legal obligation to pay for your services, in accordance with your contract. There is no similar obligation in a faith-based effort.