In a recent op-ed, Tom Daschle repeatedly invokes a baseball metaphor when discussing government-run health care. His apparent aim is to make it seem as American as baseball or apple pie. But government-run health care is really about as American as government-owned Chevrolet–and would prove even less beneficial to America’s future.
Ronald Reagan said that “outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.” He believed the American people knew this as well. But that knowledge is exactly what Daschle, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid hope we no longer have–or will soon unlearn.
Sticking with Daschle’s baseball metaphor, here are the three strikes against President Obama’s health-care plan: One, it would force millions of Americans off of employer-provided insurance. Two, it would run private insurers out of business. Three, it would eventually lead to a government monopoly and rationed care.
The centerpiece of ObamaCare is the “public option,” a form of Medicare for all. President Obama and the Democratic Congress are pitching it as a way to give individuals and families a new choice. But the pitch is high and outside, and nowhere near the plate.
Under a widespread “public option” with Medicare-like reimbursement rates, the Lewin Group estimates 118 million Americans would lose their private health insurance. The government would allow employers to contribute to the “public option” at a lower price-tag than the cost of continuing to offer private insurance. Thus, many employers would choose the government option–for their employees. Millions of employees who are currently happy with their private plans will find the choice is not theirs to make. They will lose their private insurance.
Like a government-run General Motors, a government-run “public option” would enjoy nearly limitless taxpayer financing, thus giving it a huge unfair advantage. Unlike with GM, however, the “public option” would be able to set prices for care through government regulation, rather than paying the market-prices its competitors pay. Private insurance wouldn’t be able to compete.
On average, Medicare pays 81 cents on the dollar for care. This doesn’t fly in other realms. One can’t merely declare that a government-built Chevy will now cost 81 percent as much as competitors’ models. One actually has to make a car that can be sold at that price. But no such limits apply if government can merely dictate the prices charged by others.
Once private insurers are driven out of the market, medical professionals will no longer be able to shift costs to them, and the government will have only one option to cut costs: ration care.
The irony, for an administration that seems to have little empathy for the rich, is that this health-care policy would produce a two-tiered system favoring the very rich. The rich will still pay for the care they want–whether here or abroad–out of their own pockets. The rest of us will stand in line and wait for rationed care.
This is what Reagan would call a time for choosing: a time when Americans need to stand up, and stand against, what their representatives are trying to ram down their throats. Democrats are offering the language of competition and choice as the spoonful of sugar to make the socialized medicine go down. But, before accepting it, Americans should carefully consider their options.
The number of uninsured Americans is a real and pressing problem. But there are far better, far less destructive ways of dealing with the problem of the uninsured than to threaten the preexisting insurance of others.
The best way is to give tax-credits to all uninsured Americans and to small-business employees–giving them the same tax-advantage millions of Americans already enjoy for insurance provided through their employers. This would eliminate the unfair tax-burden on the uninsured. And it would help them to afford care without compromising the care of others.
But it’s hard to see through the lens of zealotry. Daschle actually proclaims that government-run health care would not only reduce costs but would be “much more likely to be innovative.”
Government as an engine of affordability? Since 1970, Medicare’s per-beneficiary costs have risen 34 percent more than the costs of all health care in America aside from Medicare and Medicaid–and that’s even without including the costs of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Government as an engine of innovation? Government lumbers like a walrus and is as flexible as a mule. Daschle implies it maneuvers with the speed and agility of a cheetah.
The Democrats know that Americans want greater consumer-choice. That’s why they pay lip-service to choice and competition even while promoting a “public option” that would prove fatal to both.
But, today, the American people still do have a choice.
They can embrace ObamaCare, force millions of Americans off of employer-provided insurance and onto government-run care, and kill the prospects for real health-care reform.
Or they can call ObamaCare out on strikes.
Jeffrey H. Anderson, a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, is the former senior speechwriter for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is a former professor of political science at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
