The Brits' new coalition government has proposed a significant change in their nationalized health care system, National Health Service. From the New York Times:"Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers."Yes, the system would still be a form of collectivism and redistribution of wealth, but the move to decentralize power away from central planners marks a significant improvement. More local control means freer choices made at the ground level where doctors and patients require it. The important matter is that the bureaucratic behemoth would have less central control of the system, not more.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. the massive 2,409 page health care law will, if unaltered, lead to drastic centralization of the health care system. While the law contains no "public option", the mountains of new regulations, individual and corporate mandates, and still-undefined bureaucratic powers will lead to the ruin of privately insured health care. With enough time, fewer private insurers, and costs continuing to rise (as they always do) with excessive government intervention, centralization will culminate in the form of a "public option."
The cold truth is, the only "option" at this point will be nationalized medicine of some sort. And this situation will leave very few options---freedom, that is---when it comes to health services. the public option will lead to one option: Government-controlled health care.
Concerning the inevitability of the pubic option, major Democrat politicians admit so much. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently assured leftists activists at the Netroots Convention in Vegas, "We're going to have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."
In December Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, told progressive upset over the lack of a public option in the Senate version of the health care bill, “It will be revisited. This is just the beginning. … What we’re building is a starter home, not a mansion. And guess what? We have room for expansions and additions later on.”
(One must wonder if when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called leftist activists upset over the lack of a public option, "F***ing retards," he was curious why they could not see the statist handwriting on the wall.)
The sheer size and scope of the law lays the groundwork for massive growth in government and centralization of power. But its size also offers proponents of freedom ample opportunity to pick off egregious parts of the bill, one at a time. Principled Republicans have already begun planting the seeds of piecemeal repeal; let's hope they continue and use the process to educate the public.
If particularly egregious portions of the bill are repealed, one at a time, each repeal would provide an opportunity to build public support for further erosion of the law, to remind ourselves that the freer we are to order our own lives and society, the more prosperous we are individually and collectively. Health care is no exception.
The Brits have potentially taken a small step in the right direction. We need to take small legislative steps of our own to keep ourselves from lunging in the wrong direction, centralized national health and a drastic loss of freedom.
