Government Health Care 'An Abyss' Financially
April 2.2009
The chief of a nonprofit research group that studies health care policy is warning that the health care plan being developed in Congress is "an abyss" financially.
"I think there's going to be no end for the claims for more and more people to be added to the government plan," Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, which promotes a "more informed public debate" over issues that advance individual freedom, consumer choice and competition in health care.
Turner was interviewed by Greg Corombos of Radio America/WND and the audio of the exchange is embedded here
She was asked about Obama's plans to spend $600 billion in the 2010 budget of $3.6 trillion reforming the nation's health care system, and what it would mean to America.
Turner said the administration already has confirmed that $600 billion is "just a down payment" on its plans to reform health care in the U.S.
"We really have a pretty good idea of the outline of the plan they are going to be proposing," she said. They'll want to "require everyone to have health insurance and require all employers to pay."
Since some companies and individuals may not be able to afford that, the taxpayers will be told they are making up the difference, she warned.
The real danger, she suggested, is that with a government-run program, private insurance soon will start disappearing.
"If you expand access to government programs, more and more will drop private coverage," she said. "A lot of this is going to be, I fear, replacing the private coverage with taxpayer supported coverage."
That will just raise the costs even higher, and be the first step to what she expects eventually will be "a monopoly player."
The followup is inevitable.
Already, she said, $1.1 billion is being allocated for "comparative effectiveness studies."
That will be, "what treatments are good and bad, what's going to be available to us or not. That's the first step toward rationing," she said.