Thursday, June 25, 2009

Democrats’ Government Takeover of Health Care Puts a Bureaucratic Wall Between You and Your Doctor

The 852 page discussion draft of health care legislation recently released by three House Committee Chairmen represents a sprawling government takeover of health care—placing new mandates and raising new taxes on businesses and individuals alike, while attempting to control costs largely through regulation.  The schematic attached shows the interactions of just some of the 48 government bureaucracies, programs, and offices created in the bill.  While the diagram may be as confusing as the bill is large, one theme runs throughout both:  Bureaucrats—not patients and doctors—will make the important health care decisions:

  • Bureaucrats can require your physician to stop seeing patients with private health insurance as a “condition of participation” in the government-run health plan.  (Section 225(a), p. 98)
  • Bureaucrats can enroll individuals solely in the government-run health plan.  (Section 205(b)(3), pp. 69-70)
  • Bureaucrats can revoke seniors’ choice of Medicare plans by rejecting “any or every bid” by any entity other than the government-run plan.  (Section 1175, p. 285)
  • Bureaucrats will regulate plans’ choice of doctor and hospital networks, and can reject your insurance plan if its participating doctor list is not “adequate.”  (Section 115, p. 21)
  • Bureaucrats on a new “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” will determine what health coverage you must purchase, and will tax you if you do not buy coverage that meets their diktats, whether you want (or need) that coverage or not—and whether you can afford that coverage or not.  (Section 123(b), pp. 28-30; Section 401, pp. 136-40)
  • Bureaucrats can fine small businesses who currently offer health coverage up to $500,000, for even inadvertent errors that result in workers receiving $1 less in employer contributions to that health coverage than the bureaucrat-mandated standards.  (Section 312(b), pp. 116-18; Section 321, pp. 119-27)
  • Bureaucrats running the government-run health plan can pay your doctors and hospitals as little as they want—and your physician has no right to appeal to the bureaucrats’ decision to any board or court for review.  (Section 223(f), pp. 96-97)

House Republicans are for health reform, but Democrats need to head back to the drawing board to develop a new approach—one that puts doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats, at the center of American health care.