The Uninsured Now Secondary

That sudden jolt just felt by the 40 million uninsured Americans and their supporters was the presidential carpet being yanked out from under their feet, as President Barack Obama unexpectedly abandoned so-called “universal coverage” as the chief reason a health care overhaul bill was so urgent. He’s decided instead to focus on the cost of health care for all, insured or not.

Unfortunately, the plans he and the congressional Democrats are offering would be as ineffective at that as at covering the uninsured.

The president’s abrupt abandonment of the uninsured came after a series of polls showed his proposal has lost support now that the public has discovered how expensive and intrusive it would be.
A Rasmussen Reports poll released July 13 showed more Americans (49 percent) oppose Obama’s health care proposal than favor it (46 percent). Five days later, another Rasmussen poll showed 61 percent believe high costs are the biggest problem the nation’s health care system currently faces, with only 21 percent saying so-called “universal coverage” was their chief concern.

The loss of his initial casus belli didn’t lessen Obama’s eagerness for a government takeover. As concern about universal coverage dwindled, he simply abandoned the uninsured and changed his tune to a concern for cutting costs. In a speech on Monday (July 20) Obama placed the emphasis squarely on the latter. “I’ve said this before,” he said. “Let me repeat: The bill I sign must reflect my commitment and the commitment of Congress to slow the growth of health care costs over the long run.”

Unfortunately for the 62 percent of Americans who see high costs as the biggest problem, the bills proposed by the congressional Democrats and supported by Obama would increase taxes while doing nothing to lower costs. You don’t have to take my word for it. In his July 16 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, reported the proposed health care bills would add significantly to the federal budget deficit while doing nothing to “reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

The bills before Congress are designed to push millions of Americans into a government insurance plan—in evaluating it, just consider what a great deal you’re getting from Social Security—and somehow cut costs by taking advantage of government’s universally acknowledged brilliance at running lean and mean. What that all really means is forcing consumers into a government program that rations your care, as other countries’ nationalized systems do. Get ready for long waits for treatment, if you can get treatment at all.

The sensible alternative is to deal directly with the cost problem by enabling consumers to cut costs by giving them more choice, not less. The government could do that very easily by stripping out unnecessary mandates and regulations and standardizing the tax treatment of health insurance. The increased competition would reduce insurance premiums, thus allowing the uninsured to find affordable policies if they want them.

Unfortunately, Obama and Congress aren’t considering such liberating notions, preferring instead to increase government power and decrease consumer choice.

As for the uninsured, the CBO said the proposed overhauls would enable only about a third (16 million) of them to gain coverage. That probably made it even easier for Obama to drop them from his list of concerns. But instead of throwing the uninsured overboard, he and his fellow Democrats in Congress should consider liberalizing measures that would benefit everybody.

Jeff Emanuel (jemanuel@heartland.org) is research fellow for health care policy at The Heartland Institute.