Morning Bell: It Is Time for Responsible Health Care Reform

Conn Carroll / July 30, 2009

Another day, another round of polls showing the American people do not want Obamacare. National Public Radio found that likely voters disapprove of Obamacare 47%-42% with 39% strongly opposed, compared to 25% strongly in favor. Wall Street Journal and NBC News found that 42% of Americans called Obama care a “bad idea” while only 36% said it was a “good idea.” Finally, the New York Times/CBS News poll found that “Americans are concerned that revamping the health care system would reduce the quality of their care, increase their out-of-pocket health costs and tax bills, and limit their options in choosing doctors, treatments and tests.”

In a follow-up interview, Democrat Mary Bevering of Fort Madison, Iowa, told the NYT: “We need to fix health care but if the government creates the system, I’m afraid the quality of care will go down and costs will go up: We will pay more taxes.” Bevering is dead-on. Reforming health care is an immense task that should be taken on gradually through experimentation, not top-down government planning. Heritage VP for domestic policy Stuart Butler writes in today’s Washington Times:

If the U.S. health care sector were a separate national economy, it would be the sixth largest in the world – bigger that Britain’s entire economy. Imagine five bickering congressional committees trying to redesign the British economy successfully in just a few weeks. No wonder people are getting nervous. … [and] the congressional majority wants to revamp the huge health care economy using the doctrine of central planning. So we have thousands of pages of legislation, with potentially hundreds of thousands of pages of rules and dozens of boards and “czars.” These will regulate prices, reorganize hospitals and doctors, and decide what health care each of us should and should not have. (more…)