Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper neatly dodges the question of how, as governor, he would prevent health insurance rates in Colorado from skyrocketing under federal health care reform…
“If you look at what the shared desires were in terms of health care legislation, right, pretty much everybody agrees that they want transportable insurance, we don’t want pre-existing conditions to deny someone care,” said Hickenlooper at a media roundtable (primarily on energy issues) in Denver on June 22, 2010. “But I think there’s widespread concern that a piece of legislation that ends up being 2,800 pages is going to have a variety of hidden consequences. I think where those can get worked out is at the state level.”
Well, we DON’T WANT a slide into a single-payer system that will reduce the quality of care and increase costs. And the “hidden consequences” are not going to get “worked out” at the state level. The consequences, hidden or in plain sight, are going to be force fed from Washington, like the Medicaid mandates that wreak havoc with state budgets.
Hickenlooper went on to tout the health care system in Grand Junction as a model. But as even the Los Angeles Times pointed out last year, “Depending on the point of view, Grand Junction embodies some of the principles outlined by Obama in his bid to rein in healthcare costs – such as promoting preventive care – or shows what can be done without government intervention.” [Emphasis WSYS]
It’s the command-and-control federal bureaucracy that dooms real health care reform and innovation. And Hickenlooper, who touts himself as an “entrepreneur on loan to public service,” may know that. But he can’t say it for fear of offending Democratic Party orthodoxy and his patron in the White House, Pres. Obama.
Instead, Hickenlooper sets up Colorado as “uniquely poised to be kind of the test case of where do we find the improvements, where in those 2,800 pages are hidden consequences that weren’t anticipated and how do we get them fixed?”
Newsflash: you don’t get to fix the kinks at the state level once it’s a mandate. Or Dems would have tried to do so with No Child Left Behind or Medicare. Maybe “on loan” Hick has dreams of the federal level? Or maybe he’s still learning about what happens in state government.
