Announcing the nationalization of General Motors this Monday, President Barack Obama insisted, “What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is running GM. … When a difficult decision has to be made like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the new GM, not the US government will make that decision.” But just hours earlier, President Obama was on the phone telling Detroit Mayor Dave Bing he would not allow GM to move its headquarters out of the city. And now today, the Senate is set “to grill” GM CEO Fritz Henderson and Chrysler President Jim Press over their plans to slash more than 2,400 dealerships.
What does this have to do with your health care? Everything.
Just as the Obama administration has been swearing up and down they will not interfere with how GM and Chrysler are run, they have also been claiming that a government run health insurance plan will not interfere with the health care you currently have. Both claims are extremely dubious. Heritage fellow Bob Moffit explains:
Understand that a new government-run health plan would be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Congress. Lawmakers would create it, and, at least initially, would fund it. To create a “level playing field” for its plan and private health plans against which it would compete, Congress would have to do much more than what Schumer is prescribing. No special advantages, right?
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But on a level playing field, some businesses fail. So would the new government health plan be allowed to become insolvent? Will it be allowed to fail? Or will it become another candidate for an eternal taxpayer bailout?