Healthcare Squeeze

The passage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion bill is only part of the story. Combined with the effort to get the federal government to dictate prices to the pharmaceutical industry and the coming efforts to lower the eligibility age of Medicare participants, it is pretty easy to see what is going on here. Add in the Democrats’ wholesale attack on the Medicare Advantage program, and the picture becomes even clearer. They’re pushing for a government takeover of our healthcare industry. 

Twenty-four-year-olds, under the expanded SCHIP bill, qualify in some states as children. I thought that once you could buy liquor and fight for your country you put aside your childish ways, but I guess not. Look next for the Democrats to expand eligibility for Medicare from 60- to 50-year-olds. I am 43 (soon to be 44). I didn’t realize that I could be qualifying for Medicare so quickly.

Pretty soon, the only suckers not getting free government healthcare will be the 30-somethings — and, of course, the very wealthy.

Now, all this sounds pretty good to those Americans who hate all those forms, with all their complexity, from the private health insurance market. Socialism always sounds easy.

But the result will be lower quality, less innovation, longer waiting times, healthcare rationing, fewer doctors, less life-saving drugs and more public clinics. Sounds like a great deal.

Democrats like to complain about the profits of those in the healthcare industry. But what is so bad about profit as long as it is the product of competition? Profit is what makes America tick.

This opening salvo from the Democrats on SCHIP is just beginning of their healthcare squeeze. They are intent on squeezing the private sector right out of the healthcare business.