Punishing Insurers, Drug Companies and Doctors to Health Care Bliss

We all agree that health care is too expensive. We all agree that some reform must be done. The question is what kind of reform. It appears the House health care bill wants to create health care bliss through punishment of just about everyone involved in providing health care.

The health care overhaul bill produced by House Democrats would impose an array of new taxes, fees and government mandates on major players in the health industry, including insurers, doctors and drugs and medical devices makers.

In most cases, the pain has been meted out with an eye toward raising the money needed to finance President Barack Obama's plan for reshaping the health system but also with careful regard for gaining the votes that will be needed to pass a final bill.

Try to imagine this logic. The Democrats are going to solve our health care problems by making it more difficult to be a health insurance provider, a drug company, medical device company, and a doctor. If that sounds counter intuitive, that's because it is. In fact, it's just plain looney.

If you make it more difficult to be anything, you get less of that. In this case, there will be less doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, and medical device providers. That's not giving the consumer more choice but less choice. Less choice also means higher costs.

The Democrats are desperate to do several things. First, they're desperate to pass a bill. When a situation like this happens, often the bill becomes a disaster. Second, they're desperate to pay for this massive bill. Revenues, or better yet taxes and fees, have to be used to pay for the bill. Both the health insurance providers and the drug companies are unsympathetic figures. So, if you tax them more, few people get upset. That's a political decision not an economic decision.

So, this bill literally punishes just about everyone involved in providing health care. That's a recipe for a health care disaster. This bill is just under 2000 pages. This is only the first trickle of information that is coming in. As the public analyzes this bill some more, I am sure it will only look even uglier. Punishing those that provide health care is the opposite of what you want to do to provide better health care. Yet, that's the solution that Pelosi Care has brought.