Factors Leading to Excessive Federalization of Health Care Financing

The Obama healthcare agenda is to accelerate the path toward socialized medicine, but it can be stopped. Growth of the aging population will naturally lead to significant increase in the ratio of federal to total health care financing from the current 33%. This already implies a shift toward more centralized government control of health care through expansion of Medicare rolls. In addition, as employees move among companies with periods of unemployment, those caught in between employers will desire portable coverage, leading to further accumulation on the federal budget if a public option is considered.

Lack of cost containment or adaptation by the insurance industry will negatively affect business competitiveness, leading to a tipping point where employer based insurance loses viability, unless a hard stop is put in to prevent this and force parties to the table to find a hybrid solution that includes private enterprise and patient directed health care. Socialism is about the power of centralization and not the freedom of the individual to make their own choices. If not checked, this road map leads to a single payer system, with budgetary constraints forcing care rationing at a national policy level, and with fallout to compromise religious beliefs in the practice of medicine for expediency.

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Christopher Grell