The Baucus-Kennedy Health Care Dictatorship

Last week, Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) warned on the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page that “We Cannot Delay Health Care Reform”. Their article provided a lot of detail about the soaring costs of medical care in the United States, the impact of those costs on families and employers, and the “urgent” need to reform the system “now”. But it provided very little detail about what sort of reform they are proposing. Based on the few details they do provide, however, it is possible to deduce what the reformed system will look like.

I’ve written before, based on Arnold Kling’s excellent analysis Crisis of Abundance that the laws of economics prohibit the creation of an affordable health care system that simultaneously provides choice of treatment while insulating the consumer from its costs. Clearly Sens. Kennedy and Baucus desire a system that is affordable – that is the thrust of their article. They also wish to continue insulating the consumer from costs – they are very concerned that “higher deductibles, larger co-payments and greater exclusions from coverage are causing families to bear more out-of-pocket costs.”

Logically, there is only one alternative left. The Baucus-Kennedy plan does not allow choice. They hint as much near the end of their essay: “Today, even as costs rise, the Rand Corporation has shown that Americans receive the recommended care for their conditions only half the time. A revitalized system should reward doctors and hospitals for providing effective, efficient care”. Clearly what they are describing is a system where someone, they do not say who, “recommends” care for any given condition, and doctors and hospitals would be coerced into following the recommendations via a system of carrots and sticks. Indeed, by creating federal board to issue the recommendations, the Economic Stagnation Bill has already implemented the first half of this program.

Beware of those who insist that we cannot delay. They are often seeking to avoid an open debate. In the case of Sens. Baucus and Kennedy, open debate would reveal that the plan they are proposing is one where bureaucrats, not families, dictate the treatment for what ails us.