Government Takeover Of Health Already Real

In an editorial by Walter Mears, Associated Press Editor, that President Barack Obama's health care reform push would point toward a government takeover of the system. Though Democrats strongly deny that, there's evidence that it's already happening, inexorably, whatever the outcome on the Republican-delayed health care bill.

This year, government programs will account for more than half of U.S. health care spending by 2012, and that slice of the budget pie will keep climbing upward, according to federal actuaries.

In 2010, federal and state government programs now cover an estimated 42% of health care spend. The possibility is likely that itll reach 52% before the end of the decade.

"I don't know if anybody noticed that, for the first time this year, you saw more people getting health care from government than you did from the private sector; not because of anything we did, but because more and more people are losing their health care from their employers. It's becoming unaffordable," US President Barack Obama told reporters.

Obamas called party leaders to discuss health care with him on television. He may be willing to give a compromise offer built into a challenge to the Republicans, who held the party line against his health care bill with unanimous opposition in the Senate and only one GOP vote in the House.

Thus the president's call for a conference with both Republicans and Democrats plus health care experts to compare "their ideas, our ideas ... in a methodical way so the American people can see and compare."

In it they can also can see and compare the cost of doing nothing. That's based on the impact of the recession and unemployment, Medicaid spending and the aging baby boomers who will turn 65 and become eligible for Medicare.

The report estimated the US national health care spending already at $2.5 trillion in 2009, or 17.3% of the economy after the sharpest one-year increase in 50 years.

By 2020, health spending is expected to reach $4.5 trillion a year and account for about 20% of the economy.

Consider that in addition to the fact that the biggest tax break the government offers, $155 billion in taxes spared on employer-paid health insurance premiums.

That exemption benefits 162 million Americans, and even a hint of touching that stirs a political firestorm, as it has in the current debate about limiting the deduction so as to tax part of the premium on the highest-cost, so-called Cadillac health insurance plans.

Overall, trends are pointing to higher and higher health care expenses than any national budget can't afford. But the case for change collides with the hard political lines already drawn on the issue.

Obama's efforts merge "and arrive at some agreements" to get bipartisan action on health care is a risk. He told supporters that he never underestimated the problems and political risks of pushing health care reform.

"I knew this was hard," he said. "You don't think I got warnings?"

In the past, President Clinton tried it, and paid dearly. He couldn't even get a vote on his bill, in a Democratic Congress. And the failed drive for universal health care hurt Democrats in the 1994 midterm elections in which Republicans won control of Congress.

30 years ago, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill pronounced Social Security to be "the third rail of American politics" too perilous to change. Eventually it was changed to control costs but only when the alternative was imminent crisis.

Short of some kind of action this time, health care could become the new and more volatile third rail.