Health Care Reform Deja Vu

You probably don't have to be much younger than I am (I turned 34 in May) not to remember Hillarycare at all. Universal health care coverage was one of the key planks that candidate Bill Clinton promised when he ran for President in 1992. Clinton became a much more moderate President in the final 6 years of his 2 terms because of having to work with Newt Gingrich and a GOP Congress. Many of us forget, and again, some of us weren't old enough to remember how much he tried to overreach in his first 2 years. (He almost looks conservative when you compare Clinton's spending levels to those of George W. Bush, not to mention the present administration.)

Clinton appointed his wife, who of course was unelected by the American people, to oversee the whole health care process. She did so in a very secretive way, refusing to release the names of the people who were on the task force considering various health care proposals. Ira Magaziner was a pseudo-intellectual type who worked with Hillary on this particular effort, but his was about the only name that was released to the public. As the details of the bill trickled out, protests began to stir in the country at large, as well as on Capitol Hill, but the Clintons refused to budge or entertain any dissent whatsoever.

Because of their unyielding stance and the perception that they had something to hide, not to mention the fact that the bill itself was monstrously huge and stuffed with pork, ultimately Hillarycare went down in glorious flames.

Fast forward 16 years. A friend who works in Congressman Steve Buyer's office e-mailed me a copy of the government flow chart that will become reality if universal health care passes under President Obama's strident championship. Her admonition? "Read it and weep." She wasn't kidding much. I had seen John Boehner put up the same chart on TV a few days ago, but hadn't really tuned in. This labyrinthine maze of who reports to whom and which organizations receive funding from which endowments and which official OK's which appropriation, etc., etc. is mentally exhausting at just a cursory glance.

This may be intentional for a number of reasons, but it may also be inevitable. Universal health care will mean yet another expansion of government, and of course, all of the czarships that have been created within the last few months have to make sure they protect their turf, not to mention all of the cabinet agencies and undersecretaries and deputy assistants who have to offer their input...it is mind-boggling.

Support for this effort is sinking, which is heartening. People realize we are out of money. The President even admits it and says health care provision must not broaden the deficit. How can it NOT? Yet President Obama declares that we have "talked this problem to death" and the time for action has come. Yet, this obfuscates the fact that we have no assurance that the current plan being considered in Congress will cover all of the uninsured. We do know that it will change the health care system of the United States forever and create yet another massive bureaucracy.

For this reason alone, it must be opposed. But, one must also ask what role we should play as custodians of our own health? More on that tomorrow.