It is hard to say whether the BOcare debacle will be ended quite the way Krauthammer suggests here, but it will likely have similar results in any case.
(5) Promise nothing but pleasure -- for now. Make health insurance universal and permanently protected. Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one -- Obamacare 2.0 -- promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick, and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.
What's not to like? If you have insurance, you'll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.
The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.
This "plan" is WAY more detailed than "Coverage for all, cheaper, better with more choice"!! This "plan" actually has something about HOW!!! But, like all things in this world that are "only pleasure" ....
Isn't there a catch? Of course, there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.
However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That's when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.
But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.
Government is a lot like drugs, smoking, gambling or other vices. When you "start", it seems "all good" -- it is just after you have been in it for awhile, realize how dependent you have become, how few other choices you now have, and how much power you have given up to your addiction, that you realize "they've got me". Then, as intended in the beginning, it is too late!!
