Tonight, President Barack Obama will hold a prime-time press conference for the purpose of promoting and defending his health care "reform" plan. The solutions he will offer to high costs, lack of access, poor quality of care, etc., will amount to retention and expansion of every stump-stupid idea that has increased costs, impeded access and blocked advances in quality of care for more than a century.
If Obama is serious about real health care reform, he'll offer a very different plan than the one you know he's going to offer. Something along these lines would be a decent start:
- Repeal of the Controlled Substances Act, all of its amendments and subsidiary/complementary laws, and all of it enforcement agencies, effective immediately (pharmacies would, of course, remain free to require a doctor's prescription for a medication if they so choose).
- Abolition of the Food and Drug Administration, effective January 1, 2010 (the insurance industry will likely have an analog to Underwriters Laboratory up and running in short order to replace FDA's regulations with recommendations).
- Phased repeal of Medicare in reverse by part (i.e. from D to A) beginning on January 1, 2010 and proceeding in six-month phases to conclude December 31st, 2011.
- Repeal of federal Medicaid funding and oversight, effective January 1, 2010 (if the states want to keep their ends of that program running, well, the 10th Amendment says they're allowed to be stupid in areas of stupidity not delegated to the feds).
- Effective January 1, 2010, invocation of the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce for the purpose of exempting from all licensing requirements any health care provider who offers treatment to patients from outside the state in which his or her primary practice is located.
Of course, we know that Obama isn't serious about real reform, so BOHICA.
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