Around the nation: Pennsylvania healthcare

"In health news from the states, Pennsylvania has provided the latest example of good government intentions perverted by unintended consequences. Governor Ed Rendell recently proposed to overhaul the state’s healthcare system by taxing businesses to cover the state’s uninsured population. The billions in new taxes will certainly bring on some sticker shock, because only six percent of the state’s population is uninsured. As nearby Connecticut discovered, spending $18 billion a year to cover merely six percent of the Connecticut population was bitter medicine for the government, although Democrats still hope the scheme will become law. Despite worldwide publicity, most government bureaucrats hope the news that their healthcare schemes would double the size of most states’ budgets will not be reported, so their schemes are being marketed as a cost and tax savings to provide affordable health coverage.

The creator of socialized medicine, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, long ago noted that the real purpose behind the creation of a government monopoly on healthcare is preservation of the state. When big-government liberals justify colossal tax increases and bureaucratic growth to benefit only a tiny minority of the population, we should remember that transferring more power from individuals to the government is their real goal, not the banal, egalitarian-sounding guise of “free” healthcare for everyone."

From the Patriot Post.