How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism

[babsbunny]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/11/21/how-tom-daschle-might-kill-conservatism.html

November 21, 2008 02:00 AM ET | James Pethokoukis

The GOP strategist had been joking about the upcoming presidential election and giving his humorous assessments of the candidates. Then he suddenly cut out the schtick and got scary serious. "Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail."

And it turns out that the fearsome harbinger of free-market doom is the mild-mannered ex-U.S. senator with the little, red glasses, Tom Daschle. He'll be the guy shepherding President Barack Obama's healthcare plan through Congress via his probable role as secretary of health and human services. At the core of Daschle's thinking on the subject is the creation of a "Federal Health Board that would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board" and ensure "harmonization across public programs of health-care protocols, benefits, and transparency." (Forget secretary of state, Hillary Clinton should shoot for chairman of Fed Health and run one seventh of the U.S. economy.) And the subject of that "harmonization" would be a $100 billion to $150 billion a year plan that would let individuals (and small businesses) buy insurance from private companies or from a government plan.

[baldguy]

1. Our leaders might actually come to fear the people

rather than the reverse.

[rockymountaindem]

2. "or from a government plan"

So is that similar to the Edwards plan of allowing anybody who wants to to join Medicare?

[theophilus]

3. Read recently that half of general practice type docs would

quit doctoring if given an alternative. Reason? Paperwork! The Insurance Comps. have horrendous paperwork....but so does Medicare and Medicaid. If a plan was put together requiring just a card and no paperwork for the doc, many would flock to the system totally voluntarily. This needs to be examined. IMO