Health care: Speed zone ahead
Inter Lake editorial
Whether you are for health-care 'reform" or not, the delay in deliberations over health-care legislation in Congress until October is a good thing.
Why? Transforming one-sixth of the economy is a pretty big deal, particularly if it involves transferring the health-care system into the control of the federal government.
Lawmakers and the public need to have a full understanding of whatever changes are adopted. And more importantly, whatever changes are adopted should work - they should accomplish specific goals.
The first and foremost goals most often mentioned by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats is the need to contain spiraling health-care costs and to curb federal deficit spending.
The problem is, the legislation that has been drafted so far will not accomplish those goals. And it is not just meddling Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who say so. The Congressional Budget Office projects that health-care legislation would add $239 billion to the deficit over the next decade and even steeper costs in subsequent years. Even worse, the House legislation aims to pay for federal health-care spending with job-killing taxes, including a surtax on businesses that do not provide employee health insurance, which of course would mostly be small businesses.
Obama and his congressional allies have a tough sell ahead of them, considering that polls show declining support for their proposals, which is not surprising considering that a healthy majority of Americans have insurance and are satisfied with their plans.
But there is broad consensus, we believe, that the health-care system can be improved with changes that actually work.
If true cost controls are a main goal, for instance, there should at least be consideration of some tort-reform measures to address the dead-certain problems of astronomical malpractice insurance premiums that doctors must pay, and the costs of "defensive medicine" that doctors employ to avoid being sued.
But trial lawyers have a pretty good grip on the Democratic Party, so tort reform isn't even mentioned in the bills being weighed on Capitol Hill.
The most important thing the public should be fully aware of as legislation is refined this fall: If health-care 'reforms' lead to even an incremental government takeover of the health-care system, it will be irreversible.
Once that type of system is in place, the relationship between citizens and the federal government will be fundamentally changed. Health care will become an ingrained entitlement for an expanding constituency, and politicians will be forever pressed to please that constituency.
Just think of a much larger version of the current, debt-ridden Medicare system. Does that really count as reform?