Too Early to Celebrate the Health Care Reform Lawsuits!

Thanks to the fine work of the Attorney General in Florida and Mark Levine, Esq. of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and to the great legal mind of Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson. The President’s use of the commerce clause to implement two key portions of health care reform may be hampered. These are the individual mandate and the penalty for failing to buy insurance.

But wait!

The following features of the law are still intact:
• No preexisting condition limitations
• Limitations on the premium differentiation across enrollment groups
• Removal of co pays and deductibles on preventive care, effectively killing savings accounts and major medical only plans

Those of us for rational market reform should not lose sight of how war is waged. The Waxmans and Kennedys have worked for 70 years to incrementally change the minds of Americans about government’s role in health care.

They brought us Medicare for seniors, Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for those with disabilities, Medicaid for those with disabilities, CHIP for children, CHIP/Family Care for Adults, and Medicaid for individuals…

The single payer crowd has long understood the concept of eating an elephant one bite at time.

Since this lawsuit leaves the key provisions of the health care law in place, that only work with an individual mandate:
• Premiums will increase drastically—when only the sickest and the most risk adverse are the only ones with insurance, insurance costs more.
• If one limits the price differential between age and sex groups for purchase then the healthy, whose experience is not considered will not take insurance and the cost will increase.
• Citing the failure of the program without the individual mandate, looking to increased numbers of uninsured and increased cost the only option will be single payer.

While we celebrate, they continue to eat the elephant.

What we conservative mistake for overreaching may, in fact, have been a brilliant use of the long confidence game—the long Con.

There are short Cons and long Cons. Short Cons are games like three card Monte and letters telling you have won. The long Con is more elegant and takes patience. The mark (victim) must feel that they have won or are smarter than the confidence man along the way.

We, the Marks, now feel that we are the winner when the confidence man has us positioned to handover our wallets…control of our health care in the final move of this long Con.

Please don’t accept partial wins and open up the champagne. Let’s repeal all of this monster. The only thing that stops a confidence man it his tracks is a two letter word—NO!