These are discouraging times indeed for those of us who believe in freedom of choice, private competition, and individual liberty in our health sector, and that government’s key role should be providing a strong safety net for the needy. But liberal health policy is in the ascendancy, with a huge new influx of deficit spending to further expand government’s role in the health sector and undermine private options.
We have reported on the important work of both Brian Blase and Doug Badger in detailing the huge problems the new $1.9 trillion spending law will create.
With the liberal approach, more government spending inevitably begets even more government spending to try to patch the holes and distortions created by the earlier government programs. President Biden’s promise to expand Obamacare is just that, with untold billions going to health insurance companies and new taxpayer subsidies going to families with incomes well into six figures. And all of this spending is basically put on a credit card, forwarding the bill to the nation’s children and grandchildren.
But it’s only the beginning. Those on the left will demand a vote on the “public option”—another grand new experiment in a government-run health insurance plan that will have unlimited access to taxpayer funding. And there will be votes on lowering the eligibility age to the already-bankrupt Medicare program to 55 or 60.
Further, after the pharmaceutical industry has saved millions of lives in its truly heroic achievement in creating treatments and vaccines for Covid in record time, they soon will be faced with new legislation that would impose crippling price controls.
Good luck with the next major pandemic when they are forced to lay off researchers and close laboratories. The United States has been the laboratory for the world in innovative pharmaceuticals for decades, and the leading Covid vaccines and much of the production capacity to manufacture them in record time has come from this country.
Despite total Democratic control of Congress and the White House, we believe that the American people do want choice, competition, and freedom in our health sector. Our Health Care Choices 20/20 proposal does that, without a penny of new government spending. We will continue to press forward because we believe, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
