CHP, #7 of n
Topics: Health
13 Dec 1993
From: ervan
At the forum on cutting entitlements that occurred today, Clinton
made his pitch. He had a chart showing that Medicare was consuming an
ever larger portion of the welfare budget (the rest of which has been
growing on its own, to boot). So, what's his solution to the problem
of entitlement growth? Why, his government takeover of the medical
industry. Get this: what's the big problem? *Government* provided
medical care for some people. What's his solution? *Government*
provided medical care for everyone in order to get entitlement growth
under control! People in the audience were not even laughing.
When Medicare was created in '66, the House Ways and Means Committee
estimated it would cost $12G in '90 (in '90 dollars). It actually
cost $107G. This is not cost control! Actually, it cost even more
than that because much of the cost is transferred to private insurers
via regulation. Oh, and they promised not to regulate medical providers
when they passed it too. The only good news in this is that Clinton
will not be able to miss his estimate by a factor of 8 because the
whole GDP is not that large (especially after he gets done with it )-:
On another matter regarding the CHP, I want Chau-Wen to tell me
what if any behavior should be exempt from control under the CHP. His
old argument was that helmet laws were acceptable because everyone paid
through Medicaid (and various legislators have voted on this very
canard). Pete, you were vaguely sympathetic to this too. The precedent
has come back to bite you. If all medical care suddenly becomes part of the
budget, does not the majority then have the right to control everyone's
lives in the interest of saving its health care dollars? Already,
HRC and Shalala are mumbling about gun control as a necessity under
the CHP. Regardless of what you think of gun control, it is clearly
not relevant to health care except in the most extended sense that
there is no freedom left. You have a 'right' to health care, but
nothing else. No thanks! Let me out!
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