Conservative bureaucracy-lovers

The Left is now thanking Romney for making HillaryCare respectable again. Jonathan Cohn has an article in the latest New Republic titled "Hillary Was Right" [$] that helpfully explains similarities between HillaryCare and RomneyCare... Cohn is not even referring to some obscure aspect of RomneyCare that was forced down Romney's throat by a left-wing legislature - which is how Romney's defenders have tried to explain away parts of the plan, such as the individual mandate, that are unpopular with conservatives. According to Cohn, the aspect of RomneyCare that most resembles HillaryCare is its very centerpiece, which Romney borrowed from the conservative Heritage Foundation: the health insurance "Connector."

Cohn is essentially correct. The objective of the "Connector" bureaucracy, as described by Heritage Foundation scholars, reads like an exercise in government planning. The "Connector" is supposed to "reorganize[e].a large part of the state's private insurance system into a `single market' structure with uniform rules and a central `clearinghouse' for administering coverage."

Why, exactly, do we need a new layer of government bureaucracy to do these things? So we will have someplace to buy health insurance? We're getting along just fine without layering more bureaucracy on our auto insurance. In fact, we already have a connector for both health and auto insurance. It's called the Internet. Has anyone ever heard of eHealthInsurance.com?

Why do we need a "Connector" to tell health insurers what to sell and at what price? Those sorts of price controls and mandated benefits are exactly the kind of government planning that is making health insurance so unaffordable. Shouldn't conservatives be trying to repeal those laws, instead of creating new bureaucracies that will propose, enforce, and defend them?

Aren't such efforts a distraction from reforms that would reduce government planning? For example, conservatives should be pushing Congress to let individuals and employers purchase coverage from insurers in other states. That would make health insurance more affordable by allowing those purchasers - are you listening, Massachusetts? - to avoid the costly regulations imposed by their own state government. A nationwide market for health insurance would make the Heritage/Romney approach look less like a "Connector" than a "Constrictor."

If health-insurance markets don't work as well as they should, it's because state and federal governments are doing too much planning already. Most importantly, the federal tax code denies workers ownership of their health care dollars and slaps a huge tax penalty on those without job-based coverage. Shouldn't conservatives be rolling back those government interventions instead of cooking up even more?

If I were advising Sen. Clinton, I would be urging her to boast that her approach to health-care reform enjoys support from conservatives like the Heritage Foundation and Gov. Romney. If I were advising Gov. Romney, I would prescribe a severe case of amnesia and a health-care agenda that actually reduces the role of government.

Source





NHS negligence has killed nearly half a million Scots

POOR NHS treatment has led to almost half a million Scots dying in the last 30 years, a new study has revealed. Doctors at Glasgow University found that between 1974 and 2003, a total of 462,000 people died in Scotland as a result of health service failings. It means Scotland has one of the highest avoidable death rates in western Europe.

The study examined the number of deaths caused by a lack of "timely and effective health care". The vast majority of people - around 250,000 - who died due to inadequate or delayed treatment were heart or stroke patients. Another 7300 had cancer and slightly more than 2000 were pneumonia patients.

The study revealed that avoidable deaths among men in Scotland over the time period was 176 for every 100,000 people. This compared with 159 in Portugal, 129 in Austria and 100 in Italy. Rates for women were 123 per 100,000, also higher than every other European country investigated.

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

***************************