Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

[posted online on July 12, 2007]

It's always nice to see the President take a principled stand on something. The man formerly known as "43"--and now perhaps better named "29" for his record-breaking low approval rating--is promising to battle any expansion of government health insurance for children, and not because he hates children or refuses to cough up the funds. No, this is a battle over principle: private healthcare vs. government-provided healthcare. Speaking in Cleveland recently, Bush boldly asserted:

I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it's wrong and I think it's a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress's attempt ... to federalize medicine....In my judgment that would be--it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.