Health care plan needs to be put out of its misery

The ObamaLosi health care plan cleared its first hurdle over the weekend with a narrow, 220-215 vote Saturday, and it's a tough call whether it will pass muster with the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolinian who swears he's a Republican, said the proposal for national health care, all 1,990 pages and $1.2 trillion of it, is on life support as it hits the Senate.

"The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday. "It was a bill written by liberals for liberals."

Which is amazing because Graham is one of the most liberal of Republican senators, and has been one of the early supporters for national health care though he draws the line at a public option. He may be right, though, and people who see the big picture hope he's right.

If the health care bill is not DOA already, then it's time to mash a pillow in its face. Put it out of its misery. Please.

Here's one thing that gets me about this piece of legislation: If approved it won't even kick in until 2013 -- after the next presidential election -- but the White House and Congress are both in a hurry to get it approved and signed now.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, 'this is making me sick,' " said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

The only reason I can see for this urgency is that the Democrats -- and in particular the Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Barack Obama troika may never see as much pull as it has now. If the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey give a clue, the liberal gang's power base will be in trouble in 2010.

And voters won't realize how terribly screwed up the health care system will be until after Obama is up for reelection. Convenient, no?

I'm not much of a prognosticator, and the only message I get from reading my coffee grounds is that it's time for a refill. But I expect to see the best doctors shutting down their practices and the second-raters taking over. If that's the case, health care will suffer.

I also expect to see changes in the workaday world. Unemployment is high enough right now, but if employers are required to provide health care for its employees, they'll think twice about hiring extra help.

So if you're expecting unemployment rates to drop with the health care plan in place, forget it.

Companies are already cutting back to save a few bucks, letting some employees go and dumping the extra load on the workers that stay. Crank in the cost of mandatory health coverage -- or the fines for noncompliance -- and more workers will be cut loose. That's almost a guarantee.

I expect to see employers riding the razor's edge and going more toward independent contractors instead of employees. Unfortunately, not everyone is smart enough to know what that entails or honest enough to care -- under the law independent contractors set their own schedules and work conditions, and employers won't have the same control they have over on-the-books employees. Many employers, I suspect, will attempt to call their employees independent contractors and try to set their same operational rules, and eventually lose their butts in lawsuits everywhere.

On the short-range view, national health care almost sounds like a good thing. What's wrong with keeping the people healthy even if they can't afford the scandalously high medical costs?

But on the long view, everyone loses, and the biggest loser will be the guy who punches a clock, puts in a day of work, pays his taxes, and tries to put some beans on the table. He won't be able to afford fatback to go in the beans.

###

(Photo: An anonymous ticked-off taxpayer somewhere in the USA has his say. The photo came with an email I received this morning. Convenient, yes?)