Health Care BS

Although, as this piece points out, “Romneycare” is not as bad as “Arnoldcare,” that’s a little like saying a broken hand is not as bad as a broken arm. The reality is that these plans involve massive unfunded mandates for employers and providers of health care, mandates that will add significantly to health care inflation and accomplish very little by way of solving the real problems facing heath care.

Ominously, the Massachusetts plan received enthusiastic endorsements from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Indeed, anyone with an affinity for heavy-handed government intervention in the market will find Romneycare congenial. Not only does it require businesses to pay a per head penalty if they don’t provide their workers with health insurance, it holds them liable for any medical bills incurred by an uninsured employee or any member of his immediate family.

Against all the odds, the California plan is even worse. Like the Massachusetts plan, it imposes significant penalties on employers who don’t provide health insurance to their workers. Exacerbating that error, Arnoldcare also foists new taxes and administrative costs on hospitals and physicians. This will not only exacerbate the financial woes being experienced by many providers, it will inevitably put upward pressure on health care costs in general.

These plans were adopted to solve two basic problems: the ever increasing costs of health care and the plight of the uninsured. They will exacerbate the former and the latter is largely an illusion.