Reform isn't the cure

By Pearl Wong

As many people should know, President Obama recently signed the health care reform package into law. The package consists of two bills: the House-approved Senate version presented last Christmas and a "sidecar" package which was revised and passed on March 25. Although this landmark bill has fueled political fires for over a year, most of its effects will not be implemented until 2014.

While the bill rose against all odds to become a law, debate continues. Recently, the Wall Street Journal conducted a poll on health care, posing the following question: Is health care coverage a right or a privilege?

The results show that an overwhelming portion of voters -- 71.1 percent -- consider health care coverage a privilege, not a right. Personally, I agree -- health care is not an object worthy of the same pedestal as free speech and the right to due process. Instead, health care should be considered a good within America's free markets.

Admittedly, the United States' health care system contains serious flaws in need of reform. However, Obama's campaign to provide Americans with more health care insurance options appears to fall short of what the bill actually mandates.

Recall the rhetoric of August 2009: if there was a red pill costing $120 and a blue pill costing $60, that give the same results, why on Earth would we pay for the red pill? Yet, the law has strayed far from its venerable beginnings of providing consumers both choice and inexpensive care.

First and foremost, by 2014 all American citizens must purchase insurance or face financial penalties. Obama's concern for our future is admirable, but what if we don't want health insurance? Shouldn't the choice to buy insurance be a part of our rights?

Moreover, the health care reform package does not offer more choices; rather, average Americans will face higher taxes for premium packages that offer generous coverage they don't really need. The government will set standard packages insurance companies must provide, and these packages are merely things the government thinks families need.

These same families, who could not afford health care before the law passed, will receive subsidies from the government to pay for these premiums. And where do these subsidies come from? Taxpayers.

Additionally, fiscally sound means for the government to pay for health care reform -- i.e., ways that do not tax individual citizens -- have been shot down inconclusively. The most troubling issue is the taxation on "Cadillac" plans -- the most expensive, full-featured insurance plans on the market -- which was set for 2014 then postponed to 2018 by labor unions, because most Cadillac plans cover union workers.

If Congress can hold off short-term lobbying temptations to implement this tax in 2018, there would not be much of a problem. However, Congress's past discrepancies allow little room for such hope.

America's health care is by no means fixed with the passing of this law: the problems of consumer choice, overall cost, abortion funding and equal rights for immigrants remain unresolved. In truth, Obama's law remains shortsighted and leaves its advocates woefully unprepared for the oncoming elections.

In an interview in the Wall Street Journal conducted by Peter Robinson, Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker says, "Health care in the United States is pretty good, but it does have a number of weaknesses. This bill doesn't address them. It adds taxation and regulation. It's going to increase health costs -- not contain them."

With respect to Obama's good intentions, the president needs to reevaluate his law as to how it will give consumers the choice to buy his inexpensive blue pill. He must also answer the most fundamental question of all: how will this law prevent insurance companies from requiring us to pay for a green pill that costs $240?

Pearl Wong is a sophomore economics major.