Connecticut News Junkie points us to an on-line debate between liberal Jonathan Pelto (read his post here) and conservative Heath Fahle (I don’t link to conservatives) about Sustinet, a health care initiative championed by Connecticut Democrats, with our own Betsy Ritter, of Drinking Liberally, very much in the forefront. It promises to enable Connecticut to use the new Health Care law to maximum advantage both for the people of the state and for the state itself, as it should both increase access to health care and drive down health care costs in this state.
This is all very well, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend against it, but it occurs to me that if this is successful one serendipitious result will be that we, along with other states where reason is still a factor in politics, will become even greater net exporters of federal tax dollars. We are, of course, already exporting dollars to the states where the voters want the government off their backs as soon as it deposits all its money in their pockets. It’s a given among economists that it is out of control health care costs that are driving the long term federal deficit, because so much of the federal budget goes to pay inflated health care expenses. If we get our health care costs under as much control as the new bill allows (and, I admit, that might not be by much), we will end up, as always, subsidizing the health care costs in those states that are valiantly resisting rationalizing health care in defense of recently discovered constitutional principles.
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