Government spending and controls have nearly taken over healthcare. The cost is driving some patients overseas and others into debt. It is driving the country as whole into insolvency. And Ted Kennedy is still calling on individuals to sacrifice themselves for the "public good."¹

Under the inexcusably dishonest tagline of "fixing what is broken," Kennedy's sweeping plan for healthcare reform calls for the creation of a government-sponsored insurance program, expansion of Medicaid to practically everyone (up to 500 percent of the federal poverty level!), and more. All of this will take place in the context of a Massachusetts-style mandate requiring individuals to purchase coverage. But instead of leaving what works and fixing merely what is broken, Kennedy's plan actually wipes out what few remaining market-based elements that are holding the system together, and adds more of the policies and programs that are destroying healthcare in the first place. That is not reform. That is more of the same.

Kennedy's proposed reforms are not just dishonest; they are literally unbelievable. For example, Kennedy promises that if the reforms are enacted, agencies will go after fraud and abuse and cut red tape. Has he seen the estimates on Medicare fraud lately?²

He promises that doctors and patients will know of the latest, most effective therapies for their conditions. How, by magic? If competition and advertising are so "wasteful," then we will have to have bureaucrat physicians make these decisions from Washington. Newsflash: medicine is an art and a science, not a series of flowcharts.

He promises to cut costs with preventive medicine, early screenings, and education on health, nutrition, and fitness. Haven't big government advocates been arguing for years against the low-probability, precautionary tests and diagnostics that drive costs up? And regardless, why does basic health maintenance require a social solution—what happened to "taking care of oneself?"

When they are not busy appealing to class warfare, so-called reformers like Kennedy are working to tie together citizens economically in order to increase their leverage and obfuscate the fact that controls invariably breed more controls. From their perspective, it is a winning strategy: turn an individual responsibility such as health insurance into a social problem (for example, through EMTALA³), and then propose a social solution. But America does not need leaders to concoct new social "solutions." We need our leaders to respect individual rights and de-socialize the problems.

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¹ Kennedy, Edward. "Health bill would fix what's broken" Boston Globe, May 28 2009

² Officials from the Department of Justice estimate that Medicare fraud costs more than $3 billion a year in Miami alone. See: Kennedy, K. "DOJ expands strike forces to target Medicare fraud" Associated Press, May 20 2009

³ For a nice, short read on the irrationality and immorality of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), see: Mazer, L. "The Business of Healthcare" The Undercurrent, Winter 2007

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