Health Care BS

The other day, I wrote that the death of the public option would require a stake through the heart and a full magazine of silver bullets. Like most truly bad ideas, this one won’t be easy to kill.

Thus, the White House still holds out hope that, despite apparently mortal wounds received last week in the Senate Finance Committee, the thing can still be resuscitated:

The Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

One idea that seems to be gaining steam is a proposal, allegedly favored by Senator Snowe of Maine, “to allow states to set up government plans as a fallback if commercial insurers do not control premiums.”

Unfortunately, the insurance companies won’t be allowed to “control premiums.” Coverage mandates imposed on them by the Democrats will inevitably drive up health insurance premiums.

Last year, I wrote a piece for the American Spectator , in which I described the inflationary impact state mandates have already had on health coverage costs. The results haven’t been pretty:

The cumulative effect of all these state-mandated benefits is very pricey insurance. According to Victoria Bunce and JP Weiske of CAHI, ‘mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to more than 50%, depending on the state and its mandates.’

The “fallback” continency imagined by Snowe and her friends at the White House will come to pass with the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy.  So, her compromise is a chimera.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration and its congressional accomplices are determined to find some way of shoving the public option up our down out throats.