Commentary - Tom Elliott: What Hillarycare has in store for us

Republicans, though, would be remiss to cede the issue. Polls also show that Americans loathe what universal coverage plans unavoidably require: governmental mingling in individuals’ lives. Americans who rely on Washington for health benefits will soon realize Congress sets the parameters for distributing these goodies, effectively giving it ownership of the government-insured class.

The plans being sold by Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards and Gov. Bill Richardson all contain cost-control measures euphemistically called “preventive care,” where government bureaucrats attempt to temper the costs of a national health care system by doing their best to outlaw illness.

For an idea of where this can lead, look no further than New York City, where Mayor Mike Bloomberg first popularized the idea. “All these deadly menaces result from our choices, both as individuals and as a society,” Bloomberg has said, “to ignore or encourage life-threatening risks” such as “tobacco addiction, unhealthy nutrition and excessively sedentary lifestyles.”

And he’s way beyond issue-advocacy: “Public-information campaigns are insufficient. In the realm of public health, law really does the work.”

To this end, doctors are legally required to contact authorities whenever they discover their patients have AIDS, syphilis and other maladies. This information goes into a database that tracks those afflicted with disease, including noncommunicable ones like diabetes. Bloomberg’s City Hall colleague, Joel Rivera, is trying to modify zoning laws so that impoverished neighborhoods (presumably with higher rates of obesity) would only be allowed minimal fast-food franchises. Gotham is also attempting to require that restaurants post calorie listings alongside each menu item.

When Bloomberg is challenged on whether it’s really the business of City Hall to abjure New Yorkers from smoking, eating fatty foods, using baby formula, drinking whole milk, or electing not to get circumcised, he responds that, left unbanned, taxpayers could end up footing the bill for these unhealthy habits. In other words, the objective of controlling government-provided health-care costs justifies regulating behavior. Congress will enjoy this same rationale once it counts most Americans as “clients.”

It may sound far-fetched that such radical intrusions as Bloomberg’s would ever be permitted on a national level. Yet two presidential candidates, Edwards and Gov. Mike Huckabee, already advocate enforcing a national smoking ban. Clinton has said, “My plan also has a prevention initiative, requiring the insurance industry and public programs like Medicare and Medicaid to promote wellness.”

Richardson points to New Mexico’s “regulated vending machines in schools” as a possible national model to fight childhood obesity; he also suggests federally funded “weight-loss counseling.” Edwards envisions legally requiring American women to undergo regular mammograms. And Obama has already warned ominously: “The way Americans live, eat, work and play have real implications for their health and wellness.”

Universal coverage invites Congress to legislate approved lifestyles. And this while a recent Gallup poll finds that Americans now “express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era.” Don’t like the decisions politicians are making for you? Have fun lobbying both houses of Congress to relinquish their new power.

The last few years have demonstrated that rare is the place politicians are unwilling to tread in the name of public health. Delegating greater responsibility to the government is a bad bargain that will inevitably lead not to better care, but to increased coercion.

Tom Elliott is an editorial writer for the New York Post.