Here comes Hillarycare again

Heads swollen with the flush of victory, Democrats are already lining up to push some of their favorite ways to spend your money and limit your freedoms. At the head of the line is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D.-NY, who apparently didn't learn her lesson in 1993. She is now reviving her failed health care plan, and had this to say about it:

"Health care is coming back," Mrs. Clinton, New York Democrat, told the Associated Press yesterday. "It may be a bad dream for some."

No, Mrs. Clinton, the concept of comprehensive health care isn't the bad dream, it's how you tried to implement it, not only incompetently but arrogantly. Shall we review?

First of all, you appointed a failed management consultant, Ira Magaziner, who had absolutely no background in medical or health care issues.

Mr. Magaziner not only produced a 1,000+ page document that almost no one could comprehend, he apparently violated the law while doing so. According to a federal judge in a lawsuit filed by American physicians, Magaziner knowingly lied about the employment of his task force members in order to violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a sort of "open meeting" law that required this sort of task force's meetings to be open to the public and press. Magaziner was ordered to pay almost 300,000 dollars to cover the plaintiff's legal bills, and was almost indicted for perjury. Additionally, the proposal cost 11 million dollars, far more than the $300,000 budgeted for the task. (The quoted study is quite fascinating, and worth a read.) Not a very good start to a plan that was supposed to save us money.

Enough about the mechanics of how the proposal was created, here's some of what it would have required:

1. Every business would have been forced to provide health insurance for its employees, no matter the size of its workforce. Even if you had one employee, you would be paying 80% of his or her health care. Make sure and budget for that, struggling small businesses.

2. A National Health Board of unelected officials would have been in charge of creating almost every policy that affected you, without means of redress. One example would have been "Sin taxes -- There will be some new "sin taxes," the composition of which is not yet decided." That sentence alone, taken directly from the proposal, should scare the hell out of anyone. "We're going to create some new taxes to socially engineer you. We'll let you know what and how much at a later date". No thanks.

3. Americans would have had choice, all right, but only to the extent of picking which of several plans the government was going to offer you. Going to a doctor that you pick on your own, and paying cash for that or other services, would have been illegal under this plan, with criminal penalties for both the doctor and the patient. Listen to Bill Clinton himself:

"We propose to give every American a choice among high- quality plans. You can stay with your current doctor, join a network of doctors and hospitals, or join a health maintenance organization. If you don't like your plan, every year you'll have the chance to choose a new one. The choice will be left to the American citizen, the worker -- not the boss, and certainly not some government bureaucrat."

I don't see anything about deciding to not participate and go to a doctor on your own, do you? Of course, do you think the likes of the Clintons would be denied their choice of doctor, or would have to wait a year to change plans? Dream on.

4. You would have had to possess a health ID card, which would be a defacto national ID, since you would be required to let the local health alliance know as soon as you moved anywhere.

5. More social engineering:

"p.126 HHS will control the allocation of residency slots and
(p. 129) assure preferential treatment of certain
groups of persons"

This means that the government would have decided which specialty each doctor went into, not the doctor himself, and that there would have been a "quota" system, so that women, blacks, Jews, etc., would be represented in each specialty, regardless of interest or competence. Still feeling good about that diagnosis?

This is only a small sample of the inspection, surveillance and coercion that the average American would have been subjected to if this plan had passed. There are many, many more examples. Just read the plan for yourself.


Now, how about other nations that have adopted a national health care system? Are they the models of efficiency and competence that advocates claim? Let's take a look:

1. A study released in 2005 finds that the median wait times for treatment in Canada to see a specialist ranges from 5.5 weeks for medical oncology to an incredible 40 weeks for orthopedics. Do you want to limp around for nearly a year until someone can finally look at your knee, or wait three months to start radiation treatment for cancer, as some patients have?

2. A quote from the same study:

"It also reported 12 percent of physicians and 4 percent of nurses believe they have had patients die specifically because of long waits for needed care."

This is obvious, as untreated problems tend to worsen with time. Still want government health care?

3. A National Health Service doctor in England has a blog where he details how a finite government budget and draconian cost-cutting measures force him to ration care and underserve his patients.


My main point: As soon as you make something "free", you have to ration it, as there is only so much to go around. Do you want some bureaucrat in Washington deciding you or your family members' futures, based on an actuarial scale or a yearly budget? If you're willing to spend a large amount of your finances for the best health care money can buy, shouldn't you be able to? I believe that this sort of scheme has no place in a free society.


Full disclosure: I hold a B.S. in Biology as well as a Doctor of Chiropractic degree, although I do not currently practice.