If the polls are even close to right, Barack Obama is on his way to becoming the next President. Among his many promising is universal health care coverage – and with Pelosi and Reid still in charge on the Hill, and Hillary with a green light to lead the charge – you can bet it won’t be long before they take up their plan.
Instead of leading us to the health care promised-land, though, they will likely be leading us right off a cliff into bankruptcy. Read the following op-ed by Grace-Marie Turner from today’s Washington Post about Hawaii’s failed experiment in government sponsored universal coverage for children.
Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” We’ll see if anyone is learning from Hawaii’s expensive lesson.
Hawaii’s Hard Health-Care Lesson
By GRACE-MARIE TURNER
October 27, 2008HAWAII just had a vivid lesson in health-care economics, learning that if you offer people insurance for free - surprise, surprise - they’ll quickly drop other coverage to enroll.
As a result, Hawaii is ending the only state universal child health-care program in the country after just seven months.