Legislation of the Day

It's back! The healthcare "public option" that is. California Democrat Representative Lynn Woolsey last week introduced HR 5808 to "amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish a public health insurance option." It's already got 128 House co-sponsors.

But wait, there's more: the rationale for the bill is cutting spending compared to over-costly Obamacare. In other words, the far left would save us from socialism via state-ism.

Yet that's not all. Supporters of the legislation cite a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $53 billion in deficit reduction over 9 years. The largest chunk, $37 billion, would come from bargaining doctor bills down to Medicare-plus-5 percent levels. Which might mean fewer available doctors and more emergency room visits.

And if Congress acts now, $27 billion of the deficit drop follows a future where CBO foresees (at 3) "a greater share of employees’ compensation taking the form of taxable wages and salaries (rather than nontaxable health benefits), thereby resulting in higher federal tax revenues." Yes, that's right, net salary reductions as employers "dump their employees onto government exchanges and (presumably) increase their employees' taxable wages as they phased out their health-insurance plans."

Like last year's public option proposal, HR 5808 won't pass. Still, you have to admire the bootstrapping--pass Obamacare to contaminate the health insurance market then push single-payer to cure it. Thus propelling "hopychange" into a political perpetual motion machine.