Health reform called a Trojan horse

A health-care system reform plan gaining momentum in Washington, D.C., might be called a "public option," but it is neither public-minded nor much of an option, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt said Thursday.

Leavitt, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, equates the proposal to fix the nation's medical system to the oldest bait-and-switch trick in the book: the Trojan horse. The health-care reform strategy may appear to have choice as its centerpiece, Leavitt said, but embracing the idea is embracing socialized medicine that Americans have tried to avoid at all costs.

The health-care system in place now accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total domestic product. Insurance premiums are set to double again by 2019, and total spending on health care in the United States is more than $2 trillion a year. More than 700,000 Utahns were without health insurance for six months or more in 2007 and 2008, according to the health care consumer group Families USA.

Leavitt promotes a reform plan that is consumer-oriented and private-market-driven. He believes health care has never been allowed to operate freely because the federal government imposes regulations and oversight that not only stifle the private market, but also cause much of the waste and inefficiencies that government is now proposing to fix.

Inside-the-Beltway reformers are abandoning Medicare for all or universal coverage, he said. "What they're leaving behind is the Trojan horse called public option that in effect offers people who have no insurance or who don't like the plan they're on at work a medical insurance option provided by the federal government."

The practical result of the public option will be the complete disappearance of private insurance through the workplace. That's where 70 percent of people with medical insurance get their insurance. Leavitt said no one will buy into a plan at work if the federal government is offering its own plan.

That means 118 million Americans would lose their private health insurance, he said on Wednesday during a conference call with health care Web log writers from across the country.

If you add them to the 80 million Americans already insured by Medicare or Medicaid, no private insurance system would be able to survive, "and the United States would have a government-run system like Medicare," Leavitt said.

And Medicare's a mess, Leavitt said. He based his assertion on his firsthand relationship with Medicare and its twin plan for the poor, Medicaid, as head of HHS during President George W. Bush's second term.

Advocates of government-run health care suffer under the illusion that Medicare operates more efficiently than the private sector, Leavitt said.