The New York Times reports:

Seeking to appease disgruntled governors, President Obama plans to announce on Monday that he supports amending the 2010 health care law to allow states to opt out of its most burdensome requirements three years earlier than currently permitted.

It’s significant that the president is finally acknowledging that ObamaCare is unworkable and will impose enormous burdens on the states.  Or is he?

A closer look shows that the president is not lifting the burdensome requirements ObamaCare imposes on states.  All he’s doing is proposing to move up, from 2017 to 2014, the date on which states can apply for federal permission to impose a different but equivalently or more coercive plan to expand health insurance coverage.  Here’s what the Times says about the legislation Obama will reportedly endorse, which was introduced by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Scott Brown (R-MA):

The legislation would allow states to opt out earlier from various requirements if they could demonstrate that other methods would allow them to cover as many people, with insurance that is as comprehensive and affordable, as provided by the new law. The changes also must not increase the federal deficit.

If states can meet those standards, they can ask to circumvent minimum benefit levels, structural requirements for insurance exchanges and the mandates that most individuals obtain coverage and that employers provide it. Washington would then help finance a state’s individualized health care system with federal money that would otherwise be spent there on insurance subsidies and tax credits.

So states can “opt out” of ObamaCare’s individual mandate if they cover as many people, with as many benefits, and as many government subsidies, as ObamaCare would.  The Times quotes “administration officials” on how states might do that:

The administration officials said the so-called state innovation waivers in the Wyden-Brown bill might allow a state to experiment with ways to entice people to obtain insurance rather than requiring them to buy policies. It also might allow interested states to establish a single-payer system in which the government is the sole insurer. Gov. Peter Shumlin, a newly elected Democrat in Vermont, is pursuing such a proposal.

No such state plan can make a dent in the federal laws that are fueling the relentless growth in the cost of health care (see Medicare, the federal tax treatment of health care, etc.).  Therefore, the only way that states could cover as many people as ObamaCare does is by using ObamaCare’s tactic of forcing people to buy exorbitantly costly health insurance.  And if they’re not going to use an individual mandate, the only remaining option is a single-payer health care system.

President Obama’s move is not about giving states more flexibility.  It’s about moving the nation even faster toward his ideal of a Canadian- or British-style single-payer health care system.

Obama Offers States ‘Flexibility’ to Adopt Single-Payer instead of ObamaCare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Following up on what Dan and Chris have said …

If the co-chairs of President Obama’s fiscal commission were serious about reducing federal spending and deficits, they would have proposed eliminating the federal deficit, rather than “reduc[ing] it to 2.2 percent of GDP by 2015.”  Yawn. They would have proposed cutting federal spending (currently, 24 percent of GDP and rising) to match federal tax revenue (currently at 15 percent of GDP).  But the co-chairs proposed only to “bring spending down to 22 percent and eventually 21 percent of GDP.”  Not only does that elicit another yawn, but since the co-chairs only asked for half a loaf, they won’t even get that much.

If the co-chairs were serious about reducing federal spending and deficits, they would have proposed a balanced-budget amendment.  They would have proposed block-granting Medicaid.  They would have proposed implementing Medicare vouchers immediately.  (Vouchers are the only way to reduce Medicare spending while protecting seniors from government rationing.  They would also change the political dynamics that repeatedly stymie efforts to reduce Medicare spending.)  Instead, the co-chairs propose the same ol’ failed strategy of trying to limit Medicare and Medicaid spending using government price-and-exchange controls, which they euphemistically describe as “rebates” and ”payment reforms.”  Along the same lines, they propose strengthening IPAB, ObamaCare‘s rationing board.  IPAB’s mandate is — you guessed it — to ration care by fiddling with Medicare and Medicaid’s price and exchange controls.  It will therefore inevitably fall prey to the same political buzzsaw.  To appease Republicans, the co-chairs propose unwise and unconstitutional federal rules that would prevent patients injured by negligent physicians from recovering the full amount they are due (euphemism:  medical malpractice liability “reform”).  Finally, the co-chairs propose that if federal health spending continues to grow faster than GDP growth plus 1 percent, Congress should consider “a premium support system for Medicare” (which could mean vouchers) and “a robust public option and/or all-payer system” for people under age 65 — a debate that wouldn’t even begin until 2020.

Fiscal Commission members, congresscritters, and citizens who are serious about reducing federal spending and deficits — and who are looking for specific ways to cut government spending — should instead consult Cato’s excellent web site DownsizingGovernment.org.

Obama’s Fiscal Commission and Health Care Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Church of Universal Coverage really, really, really wants you to think that the Democratic health care reforms moving through Congress are not “socialized medicine.”  Last year, I wrote a paper about why they’re wrong. On June 25, I’ll be debating the issue at a Cato policy forum with the Urban Institute’s Stan Dorn.

Today, The Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein lends his voice to the chorus of socialized-medicine deniers. Klein doesn’t add much to the discussion, except for this: Klein (correctly) observes, “Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the means of providing medicine” (emphasis his).  Single-payer systems, like the U.S. Medicare program or France’s health care system, are not socialized medicine because “the payer does not own the doctors.”

That’s right. Under socialized medicine, the government owns the doctors. When human beings can be owned, we call that slavery. Klein was probably just trying to do what other Church of Universal Coverage faithful have done over the past few years: narrow the definition of socialized medicine to the point where it has no meaning at all. (Duh, Canada doesn’t have socialized medicine — they don’t put Canadian doctors in chains, do they??)

Instead, Klein was inadvertently helpful because he clarified that the reforms he supports, and the reforms before Congress, would give the government ownership over the human capital of doctors and other clinicians. Whether we’re talking about wages, insurers’ assets, medical facilities, medical products, or even clinicians’ labor, ownership is a bundle of rights. If health care reform gives government the right to exclude people from using those resources in forbidden ways (e.g., retainer medicine, balance-billing, pure fee-for-service, whatever), then government gains control over a larger share of each bundle of ownership rights.  That equals more state ownership — of financial, physical, and even human capital — which is the very yardstick Klein uses to define socialized medicine.

If only all the socialists could be so helpful.

Ezra Klein: Socialized Medicine = Slavery is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn accuses Americans for Prosperity (AFP) of “lies” for running an ad that claims “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style healthcare to the U.S.”

AFP’s ad is more defensible than Cohn’s criticisms of it.

Cohn elides the question of whether Shana Holmes (the woman featured in the ad) was almost killed by Canada’s Medicare system.  For a supporter of single-payer like Cohn, that is tantamount to admitting that, yeah, socialized medicine sometimes kills people.

Cohn argues that the ad is unfair because Canada has many advantages over the U.S. health care sector.  That may be true, but the ad doesn’t appear to defend American health care.  It merely says, “government should never come in between your family and your doctor” and “Don’t give up your rights.”  That’s not pro-American health care or anti-reform.  It’s just anti- the type of reform that Cohn wants.  And it points to one area where our semi-socialized U.S. health care sector appears to be superior to Canada’s: quicker access to intensive treatments.  Sometimes, that saves lives.  In fact, AFP could go farther and say that the United States has another edge over Canada, in that we develop nearly all of the best new medical technologies.  In fact, our medical technologies save Canadian lives, but Canada’s health care system (and its supporters) steal the credit.

Yet “the real lie,” Cohn claims, is that the ad suggests that “Washington” wants to impose a Canadian-style system on the United States.  Cohn calls that claim “demonstrably false.” But consider:

• President Obama has said he would prefer single-payer and has hinted that he would like to make incremental changes in that direction.
• Many people who support a new public plan (e.g., Paul Krugman) do so because they believe it will lead to single-payer.
• Massachusetts, which has already implemented most of the reforms that Obama and congressional Democrats are considering, is now contemplating a large leap toward Canadian-style health care by imposing capitation on its entire health care sector.
• Government rationing becomes increasingly likely as government revenues fail to keep pace with the cost of government’s health care promises.  (See again, Massachusetts.)
• The Left wants government to ration care.  That’s the point of the comparative-effectiveness research funding.  That draft House Appropriations Committee report committed a classic Washington gaffe when it said that certain treatments “would no longer be prescribed,” because it was admitting the truth.

Cohn is correct that no politician of influence is saying she wants to impose a Canadian-style system on the United States.  But I prefer to pay attention to what they’re doing.

AFP: 1.  Cohn: 0.

Cohn vs. AFP is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Over at “The New Health Dialogue Blog,” my friend Len Nichols writes:

I am disappointed to hear the health reform conversation devolve once again into a contrived debate about a single payer, government-run health system. This is an old dispute about “socialized medicine” and one that has already been settled in the minds of a critical mass of policymakers.

A couple of things strike me about his post.

First, this debate is obviously about socialized medicine, and to argue anything else is absurd. We have a president who advocates single-payer. That president just held a health care summit to which he invited other single-payer advocates, but not a single free-market advocate. As I explain in this paper, all the bluster about “public-private partnerships” is an intellectually dishonest smokescreen. Nichols and other members of the Church of Universal Coverage hate the term “socialized medicine” not because it inaccurately describes their policies, but because it accurately describes their policies and rankles a large segment of the American public. Rather than adjust their policies, they are trying to convince the public that policies generally considered socialist really aren’t.

Second, this “old dispute” obviously has not been “settled in the minds of a critical mass of policymakers.” If that mass of opinion were truly critical, then (by definition) the fact that some are crying “socialized medicine” wouldn’t bother Nichols at all.

I think I’ll shoot my friend an email and invite him to speak at a Cato Institute policy forum where we can discuss whether President Obama is trying to move us closer to socialized medicine.

Len Nichols Is Wrong: This Debate Is about Socialized Medicine is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog