Joy Cost sees some internal incoherence in the Democratic healthcare plan:

Keeping the individual mandate but dropping the public option means that the Democratic Party will force many individuals to engage in commerce with private businesses that would intend to make a profit from such interactions. That is unbelievable! The Democratic Party was founded as an opposition group to the established economic and political orders. That opposition connects party leaders across the ages: Jackson’s destruction of the Bank of the United States, Bryan’s “Cross of Gold,” FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society.

These leaders pursued different means, but ultimately for the same end: protect the little guy from the powers that be. If the Democrats pass a health care bill with an individual mandate but without a public option — they’ll be forcing the little guy to contract with those powers.

And remember, the government is going to be imposing more regulations on these companies, and providing subsidies to them (by covering at least some of the costs of those deemed eligible). So, expect the insurance companies to quadruple the number of lobbyists they have stationed inside the Beltway, whispering in the ears of legislators about what sort of changes should be made to the system. Yet the little guy doesn’t have any K Street lobbyists, and he won’t be sending any in the future.

And the geezers will get their benefits cut by almost $500 billion! What’s not to like?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:33 am and is filed under business, Democrats, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.