Democratic Health Care Plans

There are four competing Democratic approaches to increasing government control over health care:

• Ted Kennedy
• Tom Daschle
• Max Baucus
• Barack Obama

All four plans include more spending and potentially reduced access by patients to treatment. Commentators are predicting quick action by the Democratic Congress and Presidency in 2009 on this.

Health care constitutes one-seventh of the economy, and there are 47 million uninsured residents of America. But many of those are uninsured by choice, or uninsured temporarily. The real liberal motivation to change health care, which was the first priority of Hillary Clinton when her president took office back in 1993, is to effect social change. Abortion and the homosexual agenda can be advanced under the banner of health care reform in a way that would never pass otherwise.

None of the plans are expected to be "single payer," at least not initially and publicly so. "[T]his option has been declared 'off the table' by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who's among those leading the charge for health-care reform in America. Top Democrats who will be deciding policy in America in 2009, including Baucus and President-elect Barack Obama, say single-payer is 'not politically feasible,' because the public won't strongly support it." The biggest supporter of "single payer" was Michigan Democrat John Conyers, but he lost a key committee chairmanship for the new Congress in 2009.

Each of the Democratic plans is summarized below.

Ted Kennedy's Plan

Ted Kennedy has withheld details of his plan from the public, perhaps to avoid a build-up of criticism about it. But his staff has met with interest groups in 2008 and it is expected that Kennedy's plan will be similar to the Massachusetts Plan. Kennedy's plan will likely include taxpayer-funded abortion by requiring that insurance carriers cover abortion, and requiring or using the tax incentives and penalties to include participation by taxpayers.

Tom Daschle's Plan

Tom Daschle, the former Senate Majority Leader who later became a health care lobbyist, as did his wife, set forth his plan in a book entitled "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis." Columnist Tony Blankley described Daschle's plan as follows:

He proposes setting up a board to establish standards for health care delivery in the United States that would be modeled on how the Federal Reserve Board and Securities and Exchange Commission oversee banks and corporations. Technically, it only would oversee the public health systems (Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Health Administration, etc.), which provide about 32 percent of health care nationwide.

Under Daschle's plan, "political hacks appointed to the Health board will decide whether your cardiologist is allowed to image your arteries and, if they find blockage, try to treat it successfully."

In his book, Daschle proposes leaving the details out of the legislation, as he considered the details to have been the fatal defect in the Clinton approach of 1993-1994. Instead, Daschle seeks to delegate the details to an administrative agency. With Daschle as Secretary of HHS, he may seek delegation of authority to HHS to write regulations containing the important details.

Max Baucus's Plan

Montana Senator Max Baucus has proposed the most comprehensive and detailed plan. His approach would require individuals "to enroll in a private or public health care plan or face a sanction, most likely a tax penalty. Large employers would have to offer employees coverage or pay into a fund to help the uninsured. Small firms would be exempt." Baucus's plan is similar to the Massachusetts plan in requiring individuals to purchase insurance.

CATO critiqued Baucus's plan as follows:

Under the Baucus plan, private insurance would still exist, but it would largely be private in name only. Health insurance would be reduced to little more than a public utility, operating much like, for example, the electric company, with the government regulating and controlling every aspect of the operation.

Baucus's plan would create an unusual type of "competition" between a taxpayer-subsidized government insurance plan and existing private insurance plans. But with the government able to regulate the private insurance plans, it is doubtful that this competition will have any positive effect. Both, for example, would likely be required to pay for abortion.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama did not support universal coverage during the campaign, to contrast his approach with that of Hillary Clinton. It is doubtful that this issue is a priority for him in 2009.