Nationalized Insurance and Abortion and Hyde Bill

Wow. All these recent topics wrapped up into one column by the incomparable Phyllis Schlafly.

First, General problems:

Instead of allowing insurance to compete by offering different benefit packages, the Democrats are considering insurance mandates to cover exotic benefits that individuals may not want to buy, such as in-vitro fertilization, hair transplants, rehab services, hearing aids, sex-change operations, prescription drugs, abortions, mental health and substance-abuse programs.

The Democrats intend to prohibit low-cost policies for catastrophic care. They want to bar you from buying cheaper insurance in other states.

The Democrats intend to impose community rating on a federal level, which means all customers will be offered the same rates regardless of age, obesity, smoking or other lifestyle differences. This forces young people to subsidize older patients.

The Democrats intend to launch a "public option" to compete with private insurance. Government subsidies for the public option would soon drive private insurance out of business and become the "single-payer" (government plan) that the liberals really want.

Obama promised that if you like your current insurance, you can keep it -- but that option will soon be gone under Obama reform. Your employer could cancel his company-paid insurance (because it's cheaper to pay a fine, instead), or your insurance (because it can't compete with government subsidized insurance) could cancel your company.

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Second, privacy concerns (so, HIPPA can't protect us):

Modernizing health-care records means putting all your health-care information on computers where it will be accessible to government bureaucrats to help them decide the comparative effectiveness of proposed tests and treatments in relation to your age and health (a.k.a. rationing). Private information can leak out and be used against you by employers, prospective employers, health and life insurance, ex-spouses or political opponents.
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Finally, the elephant in the room:

Unless it is excluded, abortions will be covered by national health care, thus making the taxpayers pay for hundreds of thousands of abortions every year. That's why 19 pro-life Democrats, organized by Rep. David Boren, D-Okla., sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning that they "cannot support any health-care-reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health-insurance plan."

The Obama plan will permanently put unaccountable bureaucrats (who have never treated a patient) in charge of decisions about if and when you can get the procedures and treatments you and your doctor believe are necessary.

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., believes this is "a make-or-break moment for Americans" and a battle we can and must win. As a physician, he reminds us that we can't effectively treat a problem unless we get the diagnosis right, and the Democrats have misdiagnosed the problem as too little rather than too much government intervention.

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Big unweildly and remote don't usually go over well with Americans as consumers or employees. That's one reason why anti-trust laws were implemented.