The congressionally chartered “Citizens’ Health Care Working Group” today released its final recommendations on how to reform America’s health care sector. (I commented on their interim recommendations here and here.)

As with many GOP-led health care reform efforts, this one began with leftist premises about the role of government. Recommendation #1 is that the federal government should “Establish Public Policy that All Americans Have Affordable Health Care.” Recommendation #2 is that the feds should “Guarantee Financial Protection Against Very High Health Care Costs.” (The group inadvertently neglected to cite any passage from the U.S. Constitution that actually grants Congress the power to do such things.)

Given those premises, there was little doubt that the group would recommend left-wing reforms. For example, the group claims to have developed both a “market–based model” and a “social insurance model” for achieving universal coverage. Yet the former is a mirror image of the statist Massachusetts health plan. What kind of “market-based model” increases taxes and government spending while forcing individuals to purchase government-defined insurance policies? Good grief.

I would give my right eye for a health care reform panel that would make this its charter:

To make health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of people.

To me, that doesn’t just seem simple and non-controversial, it seems to be what everyone involved in health policy wants.

Moreover, a mission like that would force the panel to consider not just the goodness of its intentions, its knowledge of today’s health care sector, or its ability to do math, but also the incentives that its recommendations would create, and their long-term impact.

Let’s hope some enterprising panel-creator is reading this.