Efforts to overhaul the health care system have moved ahead rapidly, with the insurance industry making several major concessions and the chairmen of five Congressional committees reaching a consensus on the main ingredients of legislation.
The chairmen, all Democrats, agree that everyone must carry insurance and that employers should be required to help pay for it. They also agree that the government should offer a public health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance.
But members of Congress are just now turning to the most explosive issues, which could delay or derail the process.
They have yet to tackle the question of how to pay for coverage of the uninsured.
They have not wrestled with vehement Republican objections to the idea of a new government-run insurance plan, competing directly with private insurers.
And they have not figured out the role of state insurance regulators, who enforce hundreds of state laws mandating coverage of a myriad of items, including infertility treatments, prostate cancer screening and acupuncture. ...
Comment: The Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The quick response should be that any health care issue or policy is the purview of the states solely; and federal government must devolve all affiliation with it. The alternative is this maddening march to socialism.
“And speaking of poor treatment, those who favor national health care schemes should take a good, hard look at our veterans’ hospitals. There is your national health care. These institutions are a national disgrace. If this is the care the government dispenses to those it honors as its most heroic and admirable citizens, why should anyone else expect to be treated any better?”
Ron Paul; The Revolution; pp. 90-91.
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