On Monday, the Virginia State Senate passed three separate measures outlawing a government mandate for private citizens to purchase health insurance policies. These measures are expected to pass the Republican controlled House of Delegates and be signed by Gov. Bob McDonnell. The House of Delegates intended its vote to be a message to Congress and President Barack Obama about turning a substantial healthcare reform bill into law, like the bills the House of Representatives and Senate have both already passed.
While a federal mandate would override any state law, the House of Delegates took a dangerous step in sending this message to Congress on Monday.
According to the Pew Research poll, more than 80 percent of Americans support reforms that would require insurers to provide insurance to everyone regardless of gender or pre-existing conditions. However, without a mandate guaranteeing a sufficiently large and diverse pool of customers, insurers would be forced to raise prices to rates where only the sickest Americans would be willing to buy insurance. This would defeat the purpose of those stricter regulations.
The United States and Mexico are the only Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in the world that do not provide universal health insurance to their people, despite the fact that we spend far more on health care than any other country. While the proposals in Congress are far from perfect, they would extend insurance coverage to roughly 30 million Americans, while cutting the deficit by taxing the most generous health insurance plans
and cutting wasteful Medicare spending.
The proposal is a far cry from the socialist health care systems that exist in Canada and Europe. The Democrats have accepted Republican proposals such as medical malpractice reform and Sen. John McCain’s idea of selling insurance across state lines. The
Democrats have compromised, dropping their wishes of a public option or Medicare buy-in, trying to moderate their proposals in the spirit of Brooke Leonard’s call to moderation in Tuesday’s Collegiate Times.
Congress should move forward in making one of the bills that both houses have already passed into law. The moral and fiscal difficulties with the status quo are too large to ignore any longer.
Mike LaHaye
sophomore
economics major