If Arizona’s governor gets her wish, families earning $60,000 a year can get the taxpayers to relieve them of the responsibility of covering their children with health insurance. That’s what Governor Napolitano proposed in her State of the State address.

The irony is the state currently pays about $110 a month to insure a single child. Private insurance companies charge as little as $35 a month for the same coverage. With 23 private insurance companies competing for the business, why should the taxpayers fund a government-run alternative that may ultimately drive these private companies out of the children’s health insurance business?

Incremental Approach to Single-Payer Health Care

Actually, there is a larger agenda at work here. The “Hillarycare” debacle of the early 1990s taught supporters of a Canadian-style “single payer system” that it is politically very difficult to enact radical reform all at once. So they have adopted an incremental approach. They employ the mantra of “universal coverage.” As long as the public is focused on getting everyone on some sort of health plan, the nature and source of funding of the plan gets lost in the discussion.

Pushing the expansion of Medicaid programs to cover more children is the easiest place to start. Who can be against helping kids? It’s also the cheapest place to start. Most children are healthy and require few visits to clinics or hospitals. That’s why health insurance premiums are so low for children. Most health insurance premiums are the same for a family whether they have one, two or three children.

The next step in the strategy is to cover more adults. Several states, most recently Massachusetts, have enacted expansions of their Medicaid programs to cover people earning up to 300 percent of the poverty level ($60,000 per year). In California, that is part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest proposal. As Medicaid becomes available to more and more of the middle class, incentives develop for individuals and small businesses to drop their private insurance and get the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Eventually, only a sliver of the population younger than 65 (the very wealthy) will not be covered by government-run health insurance. Those over 65 are already in a mandatory government plan with no legal way to choose an alternative. It’s called Medicare.

Doctors and patients decry the regulations, restrictions and intrusiveness of Medicare. Patients buy Medigap coverage to offset some of its deficits. Most doctors and patients like Medicaid even less. Yet the record and reputation of government-run enterprises is not enough to overcome the shortsightedness and selfishness of many in “organized medicine” and small business associations.

Many doctors urge “universal coverage,” enticed by the hope that, with Medicaid expansion, they will get paid for previously uncompensated care to uninsured patients. Small businesses find it more and more attractive to drop their own employee health insurance coverage if the state offers to take over the job. Even if they have to fund a payroll tax (as in Massachusetts), it still amounts to a huge drop in their overhead costs.

When Taxpayers Pay, Government Demands More Regulatory Control

The prospects for the quality and any future advances in health care delivery are at stake here. The right to choose our lifestyles and decide on the risks we are willing to take is also in jeopardy. As taxpayers are required to foot the bill for these choices, the government will demand more regulatory control over our lives. Already most private business owners around the country are no longer allowed to decide if they will allow smoking on their premises. In New York City, the government decides the trans-fat content of restaurant and prepared foods.

Arizonans and Americans need to understand this very important principle: when the state relieves us of responsibilities, it also relieves us of liberty.

Source: Revised version of “State’s Latest Government-Run Intrusion,” by Jeffrey Singer, M.D., originally published in the East Valley Tribune (Phoenix, AZ), February 13, 2007 (reprinted with permission): http://epaper.aztrib.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=RVZULzIwMDcvMDIvMTMjQXIwMzAwMA==&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom