The Sunday papers announced that the White House is going to “retreat” on the so-called “public option” — i.e., a government health care option to compete with the private insurers.
Instead, they are getting bipartisan support for establishing a publicly funded healthcare “co-op.”
But this is no “retreat.” The co-op arrangement is simply the public option by another name, and by a more circuitous, stealthy route — with the same ultimate objective: nationalized health care.
Understand that the “co-op” would be funded by the government (i.e., the taxpayers). More importantly, to get admission into the co-op, insurers would have to abide by the new governmental regulations regarding coverage, treatments, premiums, etc.
Ah, but this still would be “private,” right? Not according to Health and Human Services Sec. Nancy Sebelius. Here is the “money quote” from her, which gives away the White House’s game:
“I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” Sebelius said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”
Make no mistake, then: This is no liberal “retreat” from governmental health care. The new “co-op” is explicitly intended to be “a competitor to private insurers.” While ObamaCare would inject this new government entity into the healthcare marketplace, it simultaneously would:
1. Impose onerous, costly new mandates on private insurers
2. Mandate participation by unwilling individuals and small businesses, under penalty of whopping fines
3. Outlaw any private insurers that refused to adopt the new government-imposed rules
4. Compel taxpayers to fund the arrangement
Eventually, inevitably, the only private insurers that could survive this arrangement would have to operate like branch offices of the Medicare program — simply administering government “mandated” coverage, services, treatments, medicines, etc.
Rather than “single payer” socialized medicine, then, this would be more like fascist medicine: a merely nominal “private” system, in which a handful of big health care insurers and providers took their marching orders from the federal government.
Adding an 800-pound governmental gorilla into the health care marketplace, under any name, is still a net, enormous loss of your health care freedom and choice — not a gain. We need to stop this fraud in its tracks. Contact your congressman and spread these facts far and wide.
Robert James Bidinotto of EcoNOT.com is an award-winning writer, editor, and lecturer. From July 2005 to October 2008 he was editor-in-chief of The New Individualist, the monthly magazine published by The Atlas Society. He currently resides with his wife on the Chesapeake Bay.
14 comments from readers
Obama has stated, for years, that he was willing to obtain socialized medicine in steps and via smiling "masks" (his word), AKA lies.
Hopefully, no member of AtlasSphere will trust ANY "reform" coming from Obama, Reid, or Pelosi.
It also remains a system to force healthy and young people to pay much higher premiums to cover the high costs of the old and the unhealthy. The assessment of risks which should be considered in any insurance becomes much less specific. The young who do not now want insurance at the present low prices will surely rebel when they are forced to buy it at much higher prices. These are the same young who will inevitably be taxed more heavily soon to pay for the Baby Boomers' retirements on the underfunded Social Security and for their increasing medical costs on Medicare. They will also have to pick up the tab for the additional people eligible for Medicaid. This is quite a deal for the young people, too many of whom voted for Obama and the Democrats in the last election.
Beware also of Republican "compromise plans" offered in response to misguided calls for phony bipartisanship. The best National Health Care Plan is Doctors and patients interacting in a free market.
I was just reading on another web site about an ophthalmologist in Atlanta who submits forms to Medicare for payment on a particularly critical procedure to prevent blindness in newborns. He also set up or linked up with a private foundation to support this work because the delays with Medicare are so lengthy, most of these infants would be irreversibly blinded long before Medicare would approve the surgery.
Obama is said to have compared his proposed Federal Insurance plan to the Post Office, competing with UPS and FedEx. Just as the Post Office announced its annual deficit and plans to end Saturday delivery. He was being accurate, if not necessarily honest.
Delivering the mail is a relatively simple job compared to brain or eye surgery. Who will invest the years of study and training it takes to be a neurosurgeon, if in the end he is to be the slave of some affirmative-action desk jockey with an honorary GED?
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek states in the chapter Security and Freedom, "Indeed, when security is understood in too absolute a sense, the general striving for it, far from increasing the chances of freedom, becomes the gravest threat to it". Hayek ends the chapter with Benjamin Franklin's famous quote, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchse a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety".
I'm still uninsured. As a freelancer, I've been dropped through the cracks many times in the health care shell game. Baffled by the extraordinary costs of health care itself and the high costs of insurance, I just can't get a straight answer. The real problem is the politics. I've been healthy until now, but that's just luck. And my being very careful.
Co-Op Health care multiplied by security = serfdom
Andy George
Who will lead? Where are the people with sacred honor?
Diane Viewing
"With or without a public option, with or without a co-op, with or without whatever other fillips they come up with or sops to squishy Republicans they propose, the Democrats' plan to "reform" health care will be an abomination, a monstrosity, an unmitigated evil that a free people cannot tolerate and must stop."
[http://rgcombs.blog-city.com/fascist_medicine.htm]
"When the pain absolutely, positively must stop next week!"
Not for me! Keep it private.