I appreciate that the people of the area feel the need to debate the issue of health care reform within the pages of The Free Press on a nearly daily basis. Both extremes are represented and everything in between.

This is one issue that needs to be thoroughly vetted because it affects everyone’s lives. I’m generally wary of any government overreach on the issue and as I learn more of the current health care legislation the more disturbed I am.

With the current proposals that will be pared down into one bill, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 17-25 million people will still be uninsured. A good number of these people will be the young and healthy who will find it much more affordable to pay a token fine levied by the government rather than pay for expensive insurance policies.

These are the people who were supposed to bring down the cost of insurance premiums in this grand scheme. I am beginning to understand why the Price Waterhouse Coopers study (an insurance company sponsored study discerning the details of the Baucus bill) predicts that this will cost us a lot of money. I’m sure this isn’t as much a prediction as it is a promise that premiums will go up based on the fact that the insurance industry will be forced to insure high risk patients, remove yearly and lifetime spending caps, and be forced to compete with a government entity with which they cannot compete.

All of the bills ban the practice of refusing to insure people with pre-existing conditions. But with an individual mandate to carry insurance and with a toothless penalty for not carrying it, a person can go without insurance for years, come down with cancer and buy the insurance of their choosing. While I’m not a fan of government mandates on the individual nor do I appreciate locking out high risk patients, this is a glaring flaw that will certainly drive up premiums for the rest of us.

This legislation intends to drive down health care costs. The use of regressive surtaxes to pay for this bill will surely have the opposite effect. There is a surtax placed upon medical device makers, upon prescription drug companies, and, it seems, a provocative move taxing insurance companies daring them to raise premiums.

As is the case with surtaxes on generally uncompetitive businesses like health insurance companies and hospitals, they will pass the cost onto their customers. Also with surtaxes placed on the “wealthy” — currently defined as $500,000 per individual and $1 million per couple — this will negatively impact many small businesses’ hiring and compensation practices. And again, they will also pass the burden onto their customers.

The proposal also aims to cut waste from Medicare and impose real cuts to Medicare payments to doctors in order to help cover the costs of health care reform, rather than using those savings to reinvest in a nearly bankrupt program upon which millions of seniors depend.

The proposed tax on so-called “Cadillac” health insurance policies is dangerously shortsighted and angering unions. This will undoubtedly be expanded to include the types of insurance plans most Americans own. Remember, the president promised budget neutrality to cover the $850 billion-$1 trillion costs of the final bill. I sincerely doubt that enough savings can be adequately procured from spending cuts in the D.C. spendthrift culture.

So, what do we have to look forward to? Higher premiums, higher taxes, and higher healthcare expenses leaving us much further in the hole than when we started. This legislation will ultimately be an economic maelstrom that will take years and trillions of dollars for us to recover. That is if it’s possible to stop a beast on the rampage i.e. what most government programs turn out to be. I am not in favor of the status quo when it comes to health care. But compared to the solution the problem is starting to look better and better.

I know that reform is needed, but it’s not needed hastily. Hopefully the current legislation will be eventually scrapped and Congress will sit down and come up with real, meaningful solutions. But that’s blissful thinking. I’m growing weary of the constant appeasement of the special interest groups, the wholesale buying and selling of votes of members of Congress and the partisan debacle that all bills end up being in this Democratic run bureaucracy.

The House and the Senate will soon begin to debate the content of the final bill upon which to vote. I shudder to think what the final monstrous chimera assembled by our fearless leaders will end up looking like and how much it will further impoverish us.



Matt Christianson is part of a team of Free Press readers asked to comment more frequently on issues. He considers himself a conservative.