Political Snapshot: Obama’s New Healthcare Proposal

This is a new feature on TruPolitics.net. Political Shapshots offer a brief, concise summary of a current issue. Each Snapshot has a representation of the left and right perspective, as well as the TruPolitics take on the issue.

Last week, President Obama began his endorsement of his new socialized healthcare proposal. The plan, the first in the step toward universal healthcare, would create a “public-option” government-run insurance program. This taxpayer funded public insurance agency would offer inexpensive coverage to compete directly with private insurers. Government run healthcare is perhaps the most aggressive of President Obama’s policy initiatives, and fierce debate has already begun on Capitol Hill.

Right: Republicans have come out strongly against President Obama’s proposal, asserting that the plan would destroy the private insurance industry and weigh heavily on a growing deficit. Republican strategist Karl Rove stated this week that “If Democrats enact a public option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state…we won’t be able to undo the damage.” For Republicans, a loss on universal healthcare would be crippling, as the plan represents a dramatic shift left in a key private industry.

Left: Democrats have been touting healthcare reform as a remedy for the nearly 20% of Americans (under age 65) that are without health insurance. Liberal activist groups state that healthcare is fundamentally a right, and the inequity and high-cost of the current system forces out certain socio-economic sectors of society, namely the poor. The Obama Administration hopes that the public option government insurance program will create more competition in the insurance industry. The benefit, they claim, would be twofold: 1. Lower prices across the board due to increased competition; 2. Access to affordable healthcare for low income families.

TruPolitics: The healthcare system desperately needs reform. Premiums and costs are exorbitant, and both doctors and patients desire change. The answer, however, is not socialized healthcare. Nor is the answer President Obama’s clever first step in that direction.

The Obama Administration’s claim that its government program would reduce costs through increased competition may be correct. But that reduced cost comes through increased government control over society, with the government using taxpayer money to create an artificially deflated market. The price tag for healthcare reform, says the Obama Administration, will amount to $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years—a heavy cost for a country already entrenched in debt.

Most troubling is the creeping influence of socialist policies, with the Administration continually seeking to redistribute wealth and widen its role as a welfare state. Yet again, President Obama wants those who have wealth to bailout and support those that do not. Those that already have health insurance will be paying for those that do not. His public option healthcare plan would artificially depress market prices, force out private insurers, increase government bureaucracy, and create the moral hazard implicit in all welfare programs.

Healthcare is a privilege, earned either as a benefit for working for an organization, or through earned and saved income. It is not a right; it is not provided for in the Constitution and it is not meant to be equally guaranteed by the government. Healthcare desperately needs reform, but the answer is not a thinly veiled attempt to bring a failed socialist policy to America.

For more on the universal healthcare debate check out President Obama’s Moral Hazard.