wakalix

Beware Udall’s health care policy

My contribution to the November 1, 2008 Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board. (printed version)

Beware Mark Udall’s health care policy. He evaded a simple question in the Camera’s Candidate Profile: “Should the federal government follow the lead of Massachusetts and have a mandatory health care plan?”  His website clarifies: “I believe a requirement for health insurance coverage … will increase the distribution of health care costs over the entire population.”

He’s right, but this is wrong for consumers.  Mandatory insurance forces you to pay for other people’s health care at the expense of your own. When politicians force you to buy insurance, they decide what policy is acceptable, not you. They pander to special interests by mandating that your insurance include expensive benefits you may not want.

Consider Massachusetts.  The Boston Globe reports that residents whose insurance does not meet regulations “could face a hefty tax penalty.” Too bad for those who like their current policy.

Would Udall want this, or Massachusetts’ other problems?  Massachusetts authorities will “probably cut payments to doctors and hospitals” and “reduce choices for patients,” reports the Globe.  It also reports that “the wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days.”

Udall also supports expanding SCHIP, government-controlled insurance for kids. For every ten kids in SCHIP, six drop private insurance. That’s unfair competition. Worse yet, SCHIP is a “low-wage trap” that punishes recipients for increasing their income.

But for politicians, SCHIP expansion can help create a generation who votes for politician-controlled medicine from cradle to grave. Just get them addicted as children.

 Print This Post

• Politicians: Sitting on your hands & doing nothing might be an improvement
• “Universal” Health Care Kills
• Health care reform: coverage is not care.
• The ObamaCare scam
• Single payer: rationing both ideas and medicine