Under Obamacare, Government Power Will Continue to Grow

February 6, 2012

The trouble with Obamacare is not limited to the unconstitutionality of the mandate to purchase federally approved insurance. It goes much deeper.

So argues Mona Charen in a recent column on National Review Online [“It Isn’t Just the Mandate,” published on January 13 and available at http://bit.ly/AD4LiZ]. Especially dangerous—and unconstitutional as well—is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will have wide and uncontrolled power over as much of the medical market as it wants.

Remember: despite the 2,000-plus pages of the federal statute, much more of what the feds will do will be written into regulations. There is no telling just how invasive and authoritarian those regulations will be. A safe assumption is that government power will continue to grow like kudzu in mid-summer. What is left of private decision-making by doctors and patients will be whittled steadily away.

There are a lot of foolish people who think they favor Obamacare, owing to a childish trust in the benevolence of government. For all but a few who will be able to escape the net of federalized medical care, Americans will be made much worse off because President Obama and his fellow authoritarians succeeded in yoking the nation to a government-provided system.

George Leef (J.D., Duke University) is director of research at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. He is the author of Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work Movement (2005) and editor of Educating Teachers: The Best Minds Speak Out (2002). He has published widely, with articles and reviews appearing in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Regulation, the Christian Science Monitor, the Cato Journal, and other publications.