Excellent editorial in today’s Wall St. Journal editorial section entitled “Hillary Care Returns.” (sub req.)
Our quasi-socialist healthcare system has been an abysmal failure in this country. We need genuine market based reforms that enable individuals to deduct healthcare expenses (HSAs), provide for interstate commerce/allow qualified insurance companies to sell insurance nationwide, and that sets caps on damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases (an anethema to Dems who whose life blood are donations from the trial lawyers).
I hope that Bush and the GOP make this a top domestic priority in ’06. Medicare/Medicaid represents the largest single unfunded entitlement/liability and must be reformed immediately to ensure that benefits are not reduced/taxes raised (as is proposed on businesses such as Wall Mart in Maryland.) HSAs have been a great start. Now it is time to roll back the “free drugs for wealthy seniors”- who can’t even understand the labyrinthine new “prescription drug benefit” and replace it with market based solutions which always result in the most efficient allocation of scarce resources.
The government can’t run the DMV or post office efficiently. It’s time for them to get out of the healthcare business permenently. Instead of penalizing Wall Mart and other successful businesses by imposing burdensome regulations and additional taxes which will result in fewer jobs, let’s deal with the “root cause” of the healthcare problem- our intrusive federal government.
As the editorial notes the proposed tax in Maryland will have a devestating impact on all private businesses not just evil Wall Mart (who is by the way the single largest private employer in our nation):
The details vary by state, but already it’s clear the new tax would eventually hit companies a lot smaller than Wal-Mart. In Rhode Island, proposed legislation takes aim at businesses with only 1,000 employees. In other states proposals would mandate payouts of 9% or more. Once the principle is established that employers must allocate a certain share of their payroll to health care, it becomes easier to gradually extend the mandate to all businesses.
Why is it that liberals always look to more government involvement and higher taxes as the solution to every societal ill? Didn’t liberalism always used to mean less government involvement and more individual liberty, freedom, and choice?