Pat Dollard | Young Americans

WSJ:

With the nation preoccupied by the financial crisis, Democrats have been quietly working to nationalize health care.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he’s in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama’s agenda of government-run health care — entirely on the QT.

Martin KozlowskiThis was the real accomplishment of this week’s House vote for the $819 billion “stimulus,” and is the overriding theme of Congress’s first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

If Democrats learned anything from the HillaryCare defeat, it was the danger of admitting to their wish to federalize the health market. Since returning to power, they’ve pursued a new strategy: to stealthily and incrementally expand government control. “What no one is paying attention to in the [stimulus],” says Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, “is that Democrats are making a big grab at the health-care sector.”

It began one week after the swearing-in, when Nancy Pelosi whipped through a big expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The Schip bill was Democrats’ first stab at stealth expansion, unveiled in 2007, though vetoed by George W. Bush.

Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program.

Still, it’s the “stimulus” that has proven the real gift horse — a behemoth that has allowed Democrats to speed up the takeover of health care under cover of an economic crisis. They initially claimed, for instance, the “stimulus” would provide Medicaid money to states struggling to pay existing bills. What in fact it does is dramatically expand the number of Americans who qualify for Medicaid.

Under “stimulus,” Medicaid is now on offer not to just poor Americans, but Americans who have lost their jobs. And not just Americans who have lost their jobs, but their spouses and their children. And not Americans who recently lost their jobs, but those who lost jobs, say, early last year. And not just Americans who already lost their jobs, but those who will lose their jobs up to 2011. The federal government is graciously footing the whole bill. The legislation also forbids states to apply income tests in most cases.

House Democrat Henry Waxman was so thrilled by this blowout, it was left to Republicans to remind him that the very banking millionaires he dragged to the Hill last year for a grilling would now qualify for government aid. His response? A GOP proposal to limit subsidies to Americans with incomes under $1 million was accepted during markup, but had disappeared by final passage. In this new health-care nirvana, even the rich are welcome. CBO estimates? An additional 1.2 million on the federal Medicaid dime in 2009.

The “stimulus” also hijacks Cobra, a program that lets the unemployed retain access to their former company health benefits — usually for about 18 months. The new stimulus permits any former employee over the age of 55 to keep using Cobra right up until they qualify for Medicare at age 65. And here’s the kicker: Whereas employees were previously responsible for paying their health premiums while on Cobra, now the feds will pay 65%. CBO estimates? Seven million Americans will have the feds mostly pay their insurance bills in 2009.

The bill even takes a whack at the private market. Under the guise of money for “health technology,” the legislation makes the government the national coordinator for electronic health records, able to certify what platforms are acceptable. This is an attempt to squelch a growing private market that is competing to improve transparency and let consumers compare providers and costs. In liberal-world, only government should be publishing (and setting) health-care prices.

Add it up, and Democrats may move 10 million more Americans under the federal health umbrella — in just four weeks! Good luck ever cutting off that money. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority is gearing up for a Medicare fight, where it may broach plans to lower the eligibility age to 55. Whatever costs accrue, they’ll pay for by slashing the private Medicare Advantage option.

Mr. Obama will, of course, offer his health-care reform at some point. But he’s clearly happy to get what he can, when he can. Despite talk of entitlement reform, he’s voiced no disapproval of this vast new health-care grab. And don’t forget he chose Mr. Daschle, who appreciates stealth himself. In his 2008 book outlining his health-care reform, he offers his party two pieces of political advice: Move fast, before there can be a public debate, and write as vague a bill as possible.

Guiding all of this is the left’s hope that by the time America wakes up to what’s happening, it’ll be too late. Democrats might be on to something.

The Heritage Foundation sounded their own alarm a couple days ago:

Morning Bell 1-28-09

The Pelosi-Obama-Reid Trillion Dollar Debt Plan

Last Friday we warned you about some family planning provisions tucked away in the House stimulus bill. Some conservative lawmakers then took up the issue on the Sunday shows, and the provisions quickly became a symbol of how completely unrelated to “economic stimulus” the House bill really is. Being the savvy political operator he is, President Barack Obama has now instructed House Democrats to remove that one provision. But, like much of Obama’s presidency so far, this was a completely symbolic move. The family planning provisions are just one small loophole inside of a massive new permanent expansion of socialized medicine. Don’t believe us? Here is how the New York Times reports (not editorializes, a hard news report) on the bill:

The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is not just a package of spending increases and tax cuts intended to jolt the nation out of recession. For Democrats, it is also a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor, the uninsured and the unemployed, in ways they have long yearned to do.
…
As Congress rushes to inject cash into a listless economy, it is setting aside many of the restraints that have checked new domestic spending for more than a decade.
…
The economic stimulus bill prevents states from enforcing a means test. … Republicans said this proposal would take a big step toward federalizing Medicaid. For their part, Democrats said the changes took a major step toward their goal of coverage for all Americans.

This is why long time advocates for socialized medicine, like Ways and Means health subcommittee chair Pete Stark (D-CA), have been telling reporters not to expect any other health care legislation this year. This “stimulus” bill is the left’s major down payment for socialized medicine. By making everyone eligible, the bill makes government health care the default option for the unemployed. Coupled with their SCHIP legislation that makes three-fourths of all American children eligible for Medicaid, this stimulus bill is designed to maximize the pushing of Americans off their current private coverage and into government run health care.

The left’s power grab does not end with health care. As we noted last week, and the New York Times reports today, the bill will “profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government.” The NYT continues: “The proposed emergency expenditures on nearly every realm of education … would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.”

And we haven’t even got to the Christmas tree like wish list of other long sought after leftist spending priorities, which include: $1 billion for Amtrak, $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts; $400 million for global warming research; $2.4 billion for clean coal; $650 million for even more digital TV conversion coupons; $600 million for new government cars; $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings; $150 million for the Smithsonian; and $54 billion for Economic Development Office and Small Business Administration programs that the OMB or GAO have already analyzed to be “ineffective.”

All of this deficit spending has a cost. And the Congressional Budget Office confirmed yesterday that the cost of servicing the mountains of new debt of all this government expansion pushes the total price tag of just the existing House spending plans (before a single cent of Senate waste is added) to over $1 trillion dollars. In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan (D-WI) CBO director Doug Elmendorf writes: “CBO estimates that the government’s interest costs would increase by $0.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 and by a total of $347 billion over the 2009- 2019 period.” In other words, the Pelosi-Obama-Reid Debt Plan already weighs in at $1.172 trillion.

President Obama reportedly told Republicans yesterday, “I would love to not have to spend this money.” Every American is free to take Obama’s words at face value. Or you could believe the President’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Commenting on the left’s governing plans this November, he said: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” Exactly.