Most of the debate over the stimulus bill (or the Big Boondoggle as my colleague David Boaz calls it) has been over the cost and wasteful spending. Less mentioned are the bill’s many provisions that would increase government control over the U.S. Health Care system. For example,
- The bill would spend $83 billion to subsidize state Medicaid costs, including paying 100 percent of the cost of Medicaid coverage for unemployed workers and their families. And there would be no income or asset limits whatsoever on eligibility. As a result, still more of the middle-class would be shifted into government health care. Nor is the extension of eligibility limited to just the middle-class. A Republican amendment to bar millionaires from the program was stripped out before final passage in the House.
- For the unemployed who don’t go directly into government-run health care, the stimulus bill would spend $30 billion to extend COBRA coverage, and have taxpayers pick up 65 percent of premium costs. It would also require employers to continue COBRA coverage until a worker becomes eligible for Medicare. (Currently employers are only required to provide COBRA coverage for 18 months). Studies show that this would raise the cost of insurance for employers and workers.
- The bill would spend $1.1 billion to create a Comparative Effectiveness Council, so that the federal government can decide on whether medical treatments are worth the money. Once the federal government decides how medicine should be practiced, according to the summary featured in a discussion draft of the bill, “interventions…that are found to be less effective and in some cases more expensive will no longer be prescribed.”
- And, the stimulus would also spend some $20 billion for the federal government to muscle its way into the growing market for electronic medical records.
Does anyone actually believe that increasing government control over one-seventh of the U.S. economy is going to be stimulative?
