As the Obama Administration gears up its healthcare reform efforts, free market advocates have very good reason to be concerned.
Meanwhile, a comment from Kentucky's Sen. Mitch McConnell is being used as "evidence" by big-government fans that their approach is actually the way to go. McConnell said:
"Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition. Ultimately, we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market. This would take health care decisions out of doctors and patients hands and place them in the hands of another Washington bureaucracy."
Those who think that private plans losing out to public plans is simply a matter of efficiency forget who subsidizes money-losing government health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
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McConnell gave the typical conservative Republican unhealthy response.
"Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition. Ultimately, we would be left with a single government-run program controlling all of the market. This would take health care decisions out of doctors and patients hands and place them in the hands of another Washington bureaucracy."
Once again, another conservative Republican is preaching his feudalistic, divine rights doctrine. McConnell could have been more truthful had he said:
"Forcing divine right plans to compete, (and we don't like competition but prefer monopoly rule), with…"
McConnell also misrepresented the government plan. He said: "This would take health care decisions out of doctors and patients hands and place them in the hands of another Washington bureaucracy."
Not so. Factcheck.org reported:
"Conservative politicians have claimed that the stimulus bill requires that doctors follow government orders on what medical treatments can and can't be prescribed. But the bill doesn't say that." http://www.factcheck.org/politics/doctors_orders.html
But then why should conservatives be bothered with facts? After all, didn't John Stuart Mill write:
"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
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