Senate Democrats now appear to be jettisoning the idea of creating a new government program to snuff out compete with private insurance companies. It was an audacious proposal from the start, as it made their health care plan even more left-wing than the Clinton plan, which voters soundly rejected for being too statist.
Yet it was always a sideshow that helpfully distracted the Left, the Right, and the mainstream from what shrewd Democrats and their allies at AHIP have really wanted all along: an individual mandate forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance under penalty of law.
As I argue in this Cato study, an individual mandate gives government more (and more immediate) control over Americans’ health care than even the so-called “public option” would. As it has in Massachusetts, an individual mandate will allow government to control what kind of insurance you buy, how much you pay, how insurers pay doctors, where doctors report to work, how doctors practice medicine, and what kind of medical care you get.
The question now is whether the Left, the Right, and the mainstream will recognize the Senate health care bill for what it is: a massive $450 billion bailout for private insurance companies that will drive health insurance premiums and taxes higher while reducing quality, all for the benefit of a small cadre of Democrats with a preternatural need to control other people’s health care.
(Cross-posted at Politico’s Health Care Arena.)
