Americans should harbor no illusions about the fact that President Clinton's proposal to reform America's trillion-dollar health-care system represents a government takeover of approximately one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy. The president could think of only one way to tame the cost of health care, guarantee insurance coverage even if people change or lose their jobs, and extend benefits to 37 million uninsured: create a massive new bureaucracy that would command and control virtually every aspect of the delivery and financing of health-care services for the American people. The Clinton plan offers a generous "standard" benefits package that many Americans will find tempting. It will cover everything from prescription drugs to mental health benefits to abortions--all, supposedly, without imposing any "major" taxes or expanding the federal budget deficit. The Economist of London put it clearly: "Not since Franklin Roosevelt's War Production Board has it been suggested that so large a part of the American economy should suddenly be brought under government control."
It is time to candidly call the president's plan what it is. And if a highly centralized federal health-care entitlement program managed by a "National Health Board" and a network of state and regional "health alliances" isn't government-controlled medicine, nothing is.
The administration's 1,342-page "Health Security Plan" contains voluminous provisions detailing precise benefits that must be assured to virtually everyone. It contains insurance requirements for businesses; a program to oversee the quality of health-care services, medical education, and the training of physicians; malpractice and antitrust reform; new penalties to combat fraud and abuse; major changes in the Medicare program, including a prescription drug benefit; billions of dollars in tax subsidies; and dozens of other fundamental changes.
By its very complexity, the Clinton proposal unnecessarily leaves the American people at the mercy of "experts," with little or no idea whom to believe. That is what happens when government takes over delicate and highly specific decisions that are normally made through markets (even distorted markets like the health-care markets), by businesses, insurers, hospitals, doctors, and patients: The process becomes so complex that it defies understanding. Just ask the former architects--and victims--of Soviet central planning.
So here goes: this "expert's" judgment of what the Clinton plan will do. You have to decide whom to believe.
ONE EXPERT'S EXAMINATION
The Clinton plan contains several features whose effect will be
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