Obama's Trojan horse health care plan

Last week Barack Obama told members of the American Medical Association that his health care plan is not a Trojan horse that will force private medical insurers out of business--forcing us to use Obamacare and subjecting us to rationing of care and long wait times.

George Will disagrees:

To dissect today's health-care debate, the crux of which concerns a "public option," use the mind's equivalent of a surgeon's scalpel, Occam's razor, a principle of intellectual parsimony: In solving a puzzle, start with the simplest explanatory theory.

The puzzle is: Why does the president, who says that were America "starting from scratch" he would favor a "single-payer" -- government-run -- system, insist that health-care reform include a government insurance plan that competes with private insurers? The simplest answer is that such a plan will lead to a single-payer system.

Conservatives say that a government program will have the intended consequence of crowding private insurers out of the market, encouraging employers to stop providing coverage and luring employees from private insurance to the cheaper government option.

The Lewin Group estimates that 70 percent of the 172 million persons privately covered might be drawn, or pushed, to the government plan. A significant portion of the children who have enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program since eligibility requirements were relaxed in February had private insurance.

Just as with Obama's takeover of General Motors--even though the president says he doesn't want to be in the auto business--Obama's health care goal is to create more government dependency.

For those with good memories, in the same June 1 speech the president said he didn't want to tell GM what kind of cars to make--he did just that.

A snake has entered the American garden.

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