A “compromise” Republicans must resist

With talk of a “bipartisan compromise” very much in the air, this Examiner editorial becomes must reading. It shows that the compromise reportedly being worked out by a “Gang of Six” — Olympia Snowe, Charles Grassley, Robert Bennett, Lindsay Graham, Mike Crapo, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — which includes an individual mandate to buy government-approved health insurance, runs counter to basic conservative/Republican principles. Here’s why:

First, the individual mandate is the fulcrum of cooperation between government-run health care advocates and the big health insurance companies that would profit immensely if it’s approved. As the Social Security Institute’s Larry Hunter trenchantly observed, the big insurers “desperately want an individual mandate passed and will accept anything short of having their CEOs pushed out of an airplane door to get it.” Such a “public-private partnership” will work no better for health care than it has in the mortgage industry with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Second, the approach makes a mockery of individual freedom of choice because it forces everybody to buy a government-approved health insurance plan from a government-approved insurer with oversight by government bureaucrats. Finally, because of the intensive government regulation involved, mandated rationing of health care is just as inevitable under this approach as it is under Obamacare. And bureaucrats will be just as likely to make treatment choices that ought to be made by doctors and patients. Supporting such legislation will mark Senate GOPers as Republicans-In-Name-Only (RINO) enablers of the Democrats’ long-sought government takeover of health care.

JOHN adds: Tonight’s news, while by no means final, is pretty good. Chuck Grassley says Republicans are being “pushed aside” so that the Democrats can move forward with a bad bill. The Hill, meanwhile, says that no Republicans–not even Olympia Snowe–are on board with Max Baucus’s Finance Committee bill.

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