Friday, November 4, 2011

Wolf on Repealing ObamaCare

Milton Wolf has another strong OpEd in the 11/3/2011 Washington Times, "Save America: Repeal Obamacare".

He lays out numerous current and future problems of ObamaCare and offers a number of practical steps that move us closer to genuine free-market solutions. Here are a few excerpts:
There's more Congress can do immediately. Members of the supercommittee -- the extraconstitutional select bipartisan deficit-reduction panel -- can save about $2 billion in the current budget year by withdrawing early Obamacare implementation grants. Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for a law that, as currently adjudicated, is unconstitutional...

States should rescue their patients from Medicaid. This welfare program, as administered by Washington, has become an undeniable second-class health care system, and Obamacare expands it enormously... Survival rates for Medicaid patients are worse than those of private insurance patients. No surprise. Sadly -- and take a moment to ponder this -- survival rates for many ailments, including some of the most common cancers, are worse for Medicaid patients than for uninsured patients. Only Washington could create an insurance plan whose use is a worse fate than being uninsured. It’s called Medicaid...

States also have it within their power finally to kill the artificial and destructive health care insurance state boundary rules. With two identical families living across the street from each other, one could see insurance premiums tripled compared to the other's premiums because of these rules. Stop protecting the insurance companies. Health care compacts between two states would force companies to face competition from across the state line... States should eliminate well-meaning but harmful regulations that prevent carriers from providing affordable mandate-lite policies. And federal and state tax penalties that discriminate against individual policies should end.
(Read the full text of "Save America: Repeal Obamacare".)

Dr. Wolf offers both a good diagnosis and a good prescription for our health care problems. But it will be up to ordinary Americans to act.