Dan Calabrese

Let’s see. When was the last time a “temporary government program” actually expired?

There wasn’t much news in the actual substance of the House Democrats’ health care bill as unveiled today. The whole announcement was mainly  just Nancy Pelosi and crew patting themselves on the back and trying to create the impression that the bill’s enactment is a fait accompli.

It lives forever.

But they did give us something new, and anyone who’s concerned about what this health care gambit could become should be concerned about it. The bill doesn’t take full effect until 2013, at which point insurers would be barred from denying coverage to anyone because of pre-existing conditions.

We’ve debated the merits of that idea before, but what was new today was the announcement that a “temporary government program” will be created to insure all such people until the reforms are fully in force.

So if you’re unable to buy health insurance because you have a pre-existing condition, a “temporary” government program will cover you, and then . . . and then?

Presumably, in 2013, all these people will exit the government health care rolls and buy their own private insurance, now that the insurers have no choice but to sell it to them.

In 2013, we will either be starting President Obama’s second term or we will have a new Republican president. In the latter scenario, do you really envision President Palin, Romney, Huckabee or Cheney (I love doing that) going ahead and forcing all these health insurers to issue a bunch of new policies without any regard to the risk they’re incurring?

In the former scenario, do you really envision Obama being in such a hurry to dismantle a government program that is closest thing he’s been able to get so far to single-payer? Or would the opposite be more likely – that once the “temporary” program is in place, the administration informs us how well it is working, and how many more people are clamoring to be covered by it, in which case it might as well simply be expanded to cover, oh, say, everyone!

After all, in those “insurance exchanges” where private plans compete with the government plan for people’s business, the government plan always seems to win the competition, which might have a little something to do with the fact that the government can print money to subsidize its costs as well as its cut-rate premiums, and can impose mandates on its competitors.

Turns out the “public option” takes many rhetorical forms. Sometimes it’s just one more competitor in a broad field of insurance options (except that it happens to be the competitor who makes the rules). Other times it’s a “temporary government program,” except that this is about the biggest oxymoron anyone has ever spewed.

The bottom line on the Democrats’ plan is this: When you let government into the health insurance game, government controls the game, government wins the game.

Game over.

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