Harsanyi weighs in on the Democrat Health Bill:
To vote for the bill, a legislator must believe a $1 trillion price tag is "revenue neutral," or that it alleviates any of the pain higher costs bring to the average American. This would require alcohol.
Real competition, as far as anyone can tell, is antithetical to the authors of this bill. Remember, you can purchase oranges from Florida and whiskey from Kentucky, yet you're prohibited from buying health insurance from anywhere outside your state . . . so sayeth Nancy Pelosi.
Instead of creating a new market with interstate trade, what we get is the institution of the pleasant-sounding "Health Insurance Exchange," which exists, it seems, only to accommodate a non-competitive, government-run insurance option.
Now, finding a name for a state-run program without offending the lingering capitalistic sensibilities of bourgeoisie has been problematic. So Pelosi went with the innocuous "consumer option" — known for a fleeting moment as the "competitive option" and popularly as the "public option." Whatever your preference is, it's the option that leads to a single-payer insurance program.
Democrats say we can save billions by funding a plan that uses billions of wasted tax dollars from another public plan that we already supplement with billions. Make sense?
In actuality, we pay for all this by "cost sharing," or "sharing the cost" of insuring everyone through higher prices and taxes. But no fear. The legislation taxes "the rich." The bill doesn't index the tax to inflation so more of you will be on the hook as inflation rises due to the tragically irresponsible behavior of Congress and the White House. The rich — many of them small-business owners — are already set to see their rates go up in 2010.
Read the whole thing.
