Closing arguments

Paul Ryan, the de-facto leader of the opposition to the President's health care reform, made his closing arguments today. Below is an excerpt:

Even though it’s not single-payer, and even without the so-called “public option,” this is still a government takeover of health care – and here’s why we keep saying that.

The entire architecture is designed to give the federal government control over what kind of insurance is available for patients, how much health care is enough, and which treatments are worth paying for.

This plan assumes that everything is connected to everything else. You can guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions only if you have healthy people in the insurance pool to spread costs; and you can only do that by requiring everyone to buy health insurance; and you can do that only if you subsidize people; and once you start handing out subsidies, you have to impose artificial limits that further inflate the true costs and further strip decision-making power from patients and doctors.

It creates a Health Insurance Rate Authority, a Washington-controlled price-setting board. This will usurp State governments’ role in regulating insurance and premiums, and will further smother the normal market forces that would otherwise encourage innovation and cost-saving efficiencies.

It empowers Washington to decide what kind of insurance will be available. The proposal gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a new Health Benefits Advisory Committee – an unelected group of Federal bureaucrats – unprecedented Washington-centered power to create and change the requirements for “acceptable coverage.”

It gives the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force new powers to further limit patient choice, allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to unilaterally deny payment for prevention services contrary to Task Force recommendations.

It empowers a “comparative effectiveness board,” created by last year’s “stimulus” bill, that will restrict providers’ decisions about what treatments are best for their patients.

Case closed as far as I'm concerned. Watch the whole thing here.