Meet the New Plan, Same as the Old Plan

Or it may even be worse.


This morning, President Obama released his latest health care blueprint, which he hopes will breathe life into his moribund effort to overhaul one‐​sixth of the U.S. economy. The new blueprint is almost exactly the same as the House and Senate health care bills that the public have opposed since July. It mostly just splits the difference between the two.


One new element, however, is the president’s proposal to impose a new type of government price control on health insurance premiums. I explain here how those price controls are a veiled form of government rationing that helped sink the Clinton health plan.


If anything, those price controls make the president’s new plan even more bureaucratic and government‐​heavy. The Senate bill would take an ill‐​advised stab at cost‐​control by imposing a tax on the highest‐​cost health plans. That president proposes to pare back that excise tax and instead have a panel of federal bureaucrats cap the growth in health insurance premiums for all health plans. Those new government powers could make it even harder for people to obtain the coverage and care that they need.