U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, is of course a member of the conservative bloc standing strong against the health care reform bill presently being weighed in Congress. His message is more about the government than it is about health care. He doesn’t want the government involved in health care because the government would try to control pricing. The market should be left to control pricing, as it has done for the past 50 years. Also, government control of health care would harm government health care already in place, like Medicare.
Lamborn’s argument is difficult to make persuasive in any language but Lamborn language.
Lamborn sent out a release today detailing his message. It might help to think about this as a kind of neo-Cold War document.
[A] government takeover of our health care system… will do nothing but damage the health of millions of American families, not to mention the fiscal health of our nation.
[The reform bill] still includes:
– Taxes on individuals who cannot afford health coverage—or do not purchase “bureaucrat-approved” plans;
– 53 new boards, commissions, programs, and bureaucracies created in the bill as introduced;
– Harmful cuts to Medicare Advantage plans that would cause millions of seniors to lose their current coverage;
– New government price controls throughout the health care sector; and
– Determination of required health benefits by a board of federal bureaucrats—which would likely result in federal taxpayer funding of abortion coverage.
If Lamborn’s argument is based on the idea that the free market in health care we presently enjoy is not bureaucratic, then he has been hiding under a very large rock for decades.
If his argument rests on the idea that paying taxes for health care is worse even from a personal finance position than having no health care, he has been on a government health care plan too long.
If his argument also rests on the belief that we should continue to leave it to the market to control health care pricing, then he has been hiding under a very large rock while reaping the benefits of a government heath care plan too long.
“Rest assured I will continue to fight for free-market health care reform,” says Lamborn at the bottom of his release.
He includes the following two videos. They contain a lot of railing against government takeovers. They contain no details of any sort about a “free market” plan or how “tax breaks” would amount to any significant change in the system in place today, the one that has failed and will continue to fail to even basically cover millions of Americans and that makes it impossible for many sick people to buy insurance, even when they can afford it.
This is not a pro-business stance. This is an anti-government stance. If it does not intentionally put corporate profits above people, then at very least, it prefers continued outrageous health industry inadequacy to citizen and government action.
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