Washington Examiner Quotes Me On Health Care

The January 11, 2009 Washington Examiner has quoted me in their editorial on the dangers of universal health care. Here is the opening:

Universal coverage? First, look at the disaster in Massachusetts
By Examiner Editorial -- 1/11/09

To much fanfare from both right and left in 2006, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to require all residents to buy health insurance. A new state health insurance clearinghouse was created, with taxpayers subsidizing those who couldn't afford to buy coverage. Then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, promised that "every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance." Yet just two years later, Romney's much-heralded "solution" -- touted by many as the model for a national program -- has become an embarrassing flop.

Just a year after the universal coverage law passed, The New York Times reported, state insurers were already jacking up rates to twice the national average. According to Dr. Paul Hsieh, a physician and founding member of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, 43 mandatory benefits -- including those that many people did not want or need, such as in vitro fertilization -- raised the costs of coverage for Massachusetts residents by as much as 56 percent, depending upon an individual's income status. So much for "affordable" health care...

Read the rest here.

Their OpEd quoted extensively from my article in the Fall 2008 issue of The Objective Standard, "Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America".

I'm deeply grateful to the Examiner for publicizing this issue and to Craig Biddle for encouraging me to write the original article.

Update: The OpEd also appeared in the San Francisco Examiner. So it may be getting a fairly wide circulation!