The American Spectator

The Public Policy

Last Friday I examined Senator Russ Feingold's universal health care proposal to get a better understanding of what type of health care policies we are likely to see should the Democrats win Congress. While Feingold's approach is arguably modest and incremental, Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark's proposal aims to get it all in one fell swoop.

Stark's bill (PDF) creates a program called AmeriCare that is little more than Medicare For All. It gives recipients access to the benefits of Medicare Part A (hospital benefits) and Part B (outpatient services). Recipients also have prescription drug coverage similar to that offered by Blue Cross-Blue Shield. All recipients will have to pay a monthly premium and are subject to deductibles and co-insurance.

Like most Big Government solutions, however, AmeriCare limits individual choice. You can opt out of AmeriCare, but only if you demonstrate to the government's satisfaction that you have "health benefits coverage under a group health plan...that is at least equivalent to the coverage otherwise provided under" AmeriCare. So, if you are a young and healthy person starting up a small business and finances are tight, you can forget about temporarily foregoing health insurance or purchasing a low-cost policy that covers primarily catastrophic care. You are going to pay for AmeriCare whether you can afford to or not.

p>Rep. Stark has promoted AmeriCare as something that "builds on Medicare, an efficient, popular, and successful program, to provide universal coverage with minimal disruption to our current system." According to a fawning article about it in the San Francisco Chronicle : br> /p>

His program would be financed by contributions from employers, individuals and states, which would kick in to cover their poor residents. Stark said premiums would be kept affordable by using Medicare's administrative structure and getting discounts through the program's mass numbers....

It is estimated that at the outset it would cost the federal government $50 billion to $60 billion a year to get the program running. But advocates estimate that over time, savings would kick in. Money would also be saved by cutting the medical bills of the uninsured, who frequently wait until a problem is serious and harder to treat -- and thus more expensive -- before seeking medical care.

br> AmeriCare will only cost $50-$60 billion to start! Yeah, right. Apparently Medicare's history hasn't done much to stymie Stark's confidence. In 1965, federal actuaries projected Medicare would cost only $9 billion by 1990. But that's a trifling detail -- they were only

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Health Care, Business, NATO, Medicare