Health Care as a Threat

Sound odd? Well, don't forget the way Hillarycare was defeated in the early 1990s. It wasn't all about insurance industry profits. It was also driven by the fear among conservatives that a victory of this size would tip the country toward the Democratic party.

This time around, the insurance industry actually seems open to universal healthcare, with their main stipulation being that they want Congress to mandate that all Americans have coverage. Presumably this is their desire to force healthier people into the plan in order to profitably insure the less healthy, which is perfectly fair. Oddly enough, this is closer to Hillary's position than Obama's, but I don't think Obama is likely to fight this much.

Rest assured, however, conservatives are once again worried, and are gearing up for a big fight.

Here's an excerpt from a National Review article by Ramesh Ponnuru that captures their thinking pretty well:

…it [universal healthcare] would also move American politics permanently leftward. First, the inevitable disappointments and failures of a nationalized system would just as inevitably be blamed on underfunding, creating a bidding war that liberals would usually win. On those occasions when voters understood that spending had to be controlled, they would prefer that liberals control it, so as to do the bare minimum necessary. Second, the creation of a new health-care regime would alter the incentives for all the interest groups involved. In the short run, at least, squeezing money out of the government system would be more advantageous than abolishing it. Third, the creation of a new system would make free-market alternatives look more radical to the public than they do now, because they would be more radical. The public’s aversion to risk, which now hurts advocates of liberal policies as much as it helps them, would only help them.