HIllary makes false promises in health care

See update at bottom

HIllary Clinton cares about everyone. She is generous with other people's money - with yours.

She now proposes to provide health care to everyone. She is promising something she can't deliver. Why not? It's Human nature. It happens like this:

When you make something "free to everyone" then everyone demands the best care, at the time of their choosing... "Now!" So the cost of delivering care rises - due to both expecting the best care and the timing. When the cost rises, then the government has to cut back - they ration care. Loving bureaucrats decide who gets chemotherapy for the cancer and who doesn't. This now happens with insurance companies, but it is decentralized. When one bureaucrat in Washington, DC is making all the decisions he will do it without information about each patient. He will be even more arbitrary than the insurance company people.

She is promising first-class care to everyone. She can't deliver on that promise. But she doesn't intend to. She intends to get elected due to her good intentions. She knows how to blame others for her failures. We call this a "perfectly predicable surprise."

For the first time, the word "no" would come into our system. Do you need open heart surgery? Are you a poor risk because of smoking or diabetes or age? No longer would the bureaucrat at the other end of the phone say "we won't pay for it" or "you don't need it" or "we can't fit you in at our facility." The answer would simply be no — even if you pay for it yourself, you may not have one. It is this type of coercion that drives Canadians over the border to the U.S. in search of medical options denied them at home under their socialized medical structure. Now it would operate on both sides of the border.

Quoting Dick Morris. Canadians drive here and pay out of their own pockets when they are denied care. Where will we have to go? Not Mexico.

Next he addresses illegals:

In her program, she speaks of how health care is the right of every "American" — but she has a rather expansive definition of "American." In 2005, Hillary co-sponsored legislation in the United States Senate to offer free health insurance, under the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to the children of illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years. So, those who have dodged the immigration cops for five years successfully would be rewarded not only with legal status and a path to citizenship, but with immediate free health care for their children.

Indeed, when Democrats and liberals speak of the 50,000,000 uninsured Americans, more than one fifth of those are illegal immigrants. Thus, about one in five of the beneficiaries of her program for universal health insurance are illegal aliens. (Illegal immigrants are a disproportionately large segment of the uninsured population because legal immigrants and citizens who live in poverty are eligible for Medicaid, but illegal immigrants are not.)

Would Americans like to reward those whose only connection to our country is that they flouted our laws to come here with free health insurance for themselves and their children? Doubtless Hillary knows the answer is no, so she is determined to hide that aspect of her plan from the public.

And forcing the healthy to get insurance they don't now buy because they don't need it:

Hillary speaks of the importance of stopping health insurance companies from raising premiums on those who are sick. But she does not mention the inevitable flip side of her proposal — to raise premiums on those who are well. On the one hand, she would cover all those with chronic conditions with low cost health insurance and, on the other, would stop insurance companies from "cherry picking" healthy and young people for their insurance plans. The net effect would be a major increase in health insurance premiums for the vast majority of Americans.

In effect, her plan would turn "insurance" into "subsidy." The concept of insurance is that one pays a relatively low premium to guard against catastrophic expenses that are outside of our ability to meet financially. But Hillary's program would really be nothing more than a cash transfer from the healthy to the sick, not an insurance program at all.

Hillary says that her program would provide "universal" coverage for all. In order to achieve universality, one must make the program compulsory. The bulk of the uninsured do not want to have to pay for insurance. They are healthy and don't want the added burden of health insurance. That is why about half of those who are eligible for free or low cost insurance under the State Child Health Insurance Program have not signed up. Their parents don't want to.

So Hillary's program, as she freely admits, would require health insurance as a pre-condition of employment. Not having health insurance would be a violation just as driving a car without automobile insurance is illegal. The resulting coercion would force millions to pay for coverage they do not want and feel they don't need. But to pay for her national program, Hillary needs everyone to be covered so she can use their revenues to subsidize the coverage of those who are ill.

Good job, Dick.

Update. It's been tried, but won't get passed. Gov. Schawarzenegger in California proposed the same plan; he got it from the same advisers - Laurie Rubiner, who directed health-care issues at the liberal New America Foundation.

It is the same sort of top-heavy plan disguised. But the Republicans won't support it because the cost will require large tax increases. The Democrats won't support it because it isn't interventionist enough!

See more at Wall Street Journal (free link).