Vin Suprynowicz

A key contention of President Obama and the congressional sponsors of health insurance “reform” is that a health insurance “exchange” — allowing consumers to choose between private health plans with premiums artificially jacked-up by government mandates, and a government program with artificially low premiums — would increase competition.

In fact, “It would reduce competition by driving lower-cost private health plans out of business,” reports Michael Cannon, co-author of the book “Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It,” in an Aug. 6 Cato Institute paper titled “Fannie Med? Why a ‘Public Option’ Is Hazardous to Your Health.”

“President Obama’s vision of a health insurance exchange is not a market, but a prelude to a government takeover of the health care sector,” Mr. Cannon found. “In the process, millions of Americans would be ousted from their existing health plans.”

In a speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama recently reiterated a promise that he has made repeatedly since the 2008 presidential campaign: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

But after the Congressional Budget Office estimated as many as 15 million Americans could lose their existing coverage under Senator Kennedy’s legislation, the Associated Press reported on June 19, “White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally.”

The new government program “would literally oust millions of Americans from their current health plans and threaten their relationships with their doctors, as employers choose to drop their current employee health plans and as private health plans close down,” Mr. Cannon reports.

A Lewin Group analysis estimated that Obama’s campaign proposal would move 32 million Americans into a new government-run plan. But Lewin subsequently estimated that if Congress used Medicare’s price controls and opened the new program to everyone, it could pull 120 million Americans out of private insurance — more than half of the private market.

(There is a socialist letter-writing tree that attacks anyone who cites the Lewin Group as a source, pointing out the outfit is an Ingenix compoany, and thus a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Health Group — despite the fact that’s clearly disclosed on the organizations’ Web site at www.lewin.com/WhyLewin/AboutUs/ — where we also find U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, telling the Wall Street Journal “The Lewin Group (is) the gold standard of independent, health-care analysis.” Why is it that economic analyses funded by free-market sources should be held suspect, while government analysts — who have an obvious bias in favor of continuing big-government “solutions” — go unchallenged? Since no government analyst has ever lost his or her job for lowballing the likely cost of a government boondoggle, shouldn’t it be the other way around?)

“The share of Americans who depend on government for their health care would rise from just over one quarter to two-thirds,” under Obamacare, Mr. Cannon reports. And what’s more, “Many of those millions would be involuntarily ousted from their current health plans.”

Wow. Just as all those fearful citizens showing up to express their concerns at this summer’s “town hall” meetings — dismissed by congressional leaders as racists, hate-monger, and worse — have been saying.

No one should be surprised at all this, Mr. Cannon notes. “President Obama has repeatedly affirmed his preference for a single-payer, government-run health care system, such as exists in Canada. Many people, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, support a new government program precisely because they believe it will lead to a single-payer system.”

Jacob S. Hacker of the University of California-Berkeley School of Law quips, “Someone once said to me, ‘This is a Trojan Horse for single-payer,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan Horse — it’s right there!’”

If Congress wants to make health care more efficient and increase competition in insurance markets, there are far better options, Mr. Cannon suggests. Congress should let consumers — rather than employers or the government — control their health care dollars and choose their health plan. It should convert Medicare into a program that gives seniors a voucher and frees them to purchase any health plan on the market.

Reforming the tax treatment of employer-sponsored insurance with “large” health savings accounts would give workers the thousands of dollars of their earnings that employers currently control, and likewise free workers to purchase any health plan on the market.

Finally, Congress should expand competition by prohibiting states from denying market entry to health plans and providers licensed by other states — that is, by making clinician and health insurance licenses portable across state lines.

These real reforms would reduce costs, increase innovation, and reduce the number of uninsured — without higher taxes or additional government pending, Mr. Cannon concludes. So why aren’t they even on the table in Washington?

Perhaps because this isn’t really about affordability, but rather about a vast new federal bureaucracy providing lucrative jobs for legions of unionized registered Democrats — and even more importantly, about who gets to run your life.