A massive, 1,000 page health care bill is  currently on a collision course with the US economy.  A couple days ago, IBD reported on a provision that purported to ban private insurers by limiting their ability to take on new enrollees.  This reporting was not entirely accurate.  You’ll be happy to know that the provision in question only applies to insurers who don’t want to meet a web of government rules and regulations.  Feel better?

Yeah.  Me neither.

We cannot count on government officials to set guidelines that are in the consumers best interest rather than their own.  The outcome feared by IBD is still quite likely to occur.  All the government has to do is set the rules in such a way as to make compliance unprofitable, leaving only the taxpayer subsidized government plan capable of staying afloat. That’s how you create a de facto ban without explicitly banning private insurance.

Government doesn’t add choices.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. 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.

Also see my previous article: Government Won’t Allow Fair Competition

It must be difficult constructing an argument to support the unsupportable.  President Obama is reduced to trotting out the same old, tired, worn out straw-man to make the case for socialized health care.  Anytime someone objects to Obama’s radical agenda on the grounds that it is destructive and counter-productive, Obama accuses them of defending the status quo.

This intellectually dishonest tactic has gotten old, and fast.  Mr. Obama, a man of supposedly high intellect, should not be engaging in such childish tactics.  He knows damn well there are more choices on the table than the status quo or his proposal.  Accepting the current health environment is not the only alternative to opposing Obama’s bad ideas.

The Washington Post tells us the obvious:

U.S. ‘Not Getting What We Pay For’

Talk to the chief executives of America’s preeminent health-care institutions, and you might be surprised by what you hear: When it comes to medical care, the United States isn’t getting its money’s worth. Not even close.

“We’re not getting what we pay for,” says Denis Cortese, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic. “It’s just that simple.”

“Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” says Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he says.

… “There is more than enough money in the system,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who runs the District-based Center for Health Transformation. “We just are not spending it well.”

Eliminating waste and spending more on preventative care and less on worthless services is all well and good, but simply deciding to do so isn’t going to solve he problems we have now. After all, there are reasons these things happen now, and it is those reasons that must be addressed.

The biggest problem right now is that the consumer is completely insulated from health costs. Our third-party payer system makes waste a guarantee. And fee for service, rather than care, models make providers complicit. The single most important thing we can do to control spiraling health costs is make consumers price sensitive. It works for every other good, it will work for health care.