Health Care Reform: A Roundup of the Bad and the Ugly (Sorry, very little "Good" to be Found)

A defect to suit every taste.

- Contrary to representations by the Obama administration, the proposed reform would increase not

"Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government".

- Funding to come at the expense of Medicare; i.e., care of our seniors. In fact, the Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly a radical right newspaper, takes it one step further.

Even in the short term, one could argue that taxpayers are looking at an old-fashioned shell game. No sooner was the ink dry on the federal stimulus package, which provided millions of dollars for care for the elderly in Pennsylvania, than Congress and the administration began to propose major cuts in Medicare.

- By its mere existence, it would indirectly eliminate private health insurance in due course.

- As it would explicitly prohibit private coverage, it would also directly eliminate private coverage and sooner than "in due course". [Thanks to commenter TomW for this item from Wednesday's Investor's Business Daily.]

Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

- It has commentators openly advocating health care rationing.

- New York's Mr. Tax Compliant has spilled the beans about the need for higher taxes to fund it. (Shhh! Wait 'til it's passed, Charlie ...)

- The introduction of increasingly more intrusive state dictates in the area of personal behavior and private decisions. Commenter Rhody has expressed skepticism. But while these are not explicitly enumerated in the bill, Justin makes a good case that they would emerge inevitably, indeed, naturally.

By "investing" in "wellness programs" as a means of lowering costs, the government would be putting the weight of the nation's entire healthcare system on individual citizens' behavior. What couldn't be declared intolerable with such a consequence as the collapse of everybody's medical care?

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... it is enough simply to acknowledge that the party that pays is the party that controls and that to control a person's health is to control the person.