Either the governor has been smoking something he shouldn't, or he's found an old pair of Charlie Crist's flip-flops. How else do we explain his bizarre desertion of maybe the corest of his core principles: free-market competition?
The same Rick Scott who six years ago founded the Washington, D.C.-based Conservatives for Patients' Rights and spent more than $1 million to slice and dice the Affordable Care Act, is shopping around legislation he calls "Health Care Transparency," looking for a sponsor. Word is, Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Orange Park, Regulated Industries chair, is weighing the bill's merits. But I haven't been able to reach Bradley to confirm or deny.
Trust me, the bill is a little bit about adding transparency to health care in Florida, but a whole lot about fixing prices for it. SaintPetersBlog may have been the first news site to "out" this legislation beyond the governor's office and a small circle in the Legislature. Peter Schorsch wrote on Oct. 31, "In it, he calls for more government in healthcare, and government regulated price fixing caps for inpatient admission, outpatient visits, or any other medical care." Have a look at the governor's copy of the bill here. It's posted in full on his website. Specifically, read pages 7 and 8, an exhaustive, carefully worked out scramble of price controls for hospital and medical services.
Folks, price-fixing for health care is half-way to socialized medicine -- a term we euphemistically like to call "single payer," but if you've ever lived under it -- whether you like it or you don't -- you know socialized medicine is exactly what it is.
The “transparency” part comes in because patients are going to know what those those locked-in charges are, and if they are violated, health care providers face potential prosecution from the Attorney General’s office for “unconscionable” charges.
Hark back for a minute to Scott's Conservatives for Patients' Rights. More than anything, CPR was a pre-Gov. Rick Scott strategy to fight the rigidity and wrong-mindedness of Obamacare.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about CPR: "The CPR campaign for competition suggests a release of burdensome regulations against private companies in allowance of unfettered competition across the states. Scott said at that time of the CPR launch, "[When] the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed."
In 2009, Scott called for four pillars of health care reform:
- Choice (pick your own doctor)
- Competition (i.e. the exact OPPOSITE of government price controls!)
- Accountability (same tax breaks for self-insured that employers get)
- Personal responsibility -- reward health choices by patients -- i.e., lower rates for not smoking, staying physically fit and so forth.
"I believe that free-market principles will solve our health-care problems," Scott told the Washington Post in 2009. He didn't equivocate. That's what he said and that's what he meant, or so we all thought. Certainly, his strong stance in support of free markets and against Obamacare twice helped win him win the job he has today.
So, when did the radical rationalization in his core beliefs come about? Maybe we'll find out during a 10 a.m. Tuesday meeting of the Commission on Healthcare and Hospital Funding, a Scott initiative created earlier this year to look at issues in the health-care industry. (The meeting will be at Florida Gulf Coast University, WGCU television studio, 10501 FGCU Blvd. South, Fort Myers.)
In the meantime, I can tell you that almost no one with a conservative bone in his/her body agrees with Scott's new positon on price controls.
Bob McClure, president and CEO of the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee, while not addressing the governor's initiative directly, told Sunshine State News that over the past 20 years, Florida has become a beacon of liberty and prosperity, and for the most part, we've taken "a deliberate and consistent policy route to promote free markets, less government intrusion, and fewer regulatory burdens.
"And the result is clear. Between 1992 and 2014, more than $127 billion in income has migrated from high tax/high regulation states to Florida. Facts don’t lie: $23.8 billion from New York, $14.8 billion from New Jersey, $10.3 billion from Illinois, and $8.6 billion from Pennsylvania lead the way," McClure said.
"We have seen firsthand that free market principles provide the best hope for Florida ... to succeed, thrive and prosper."
Andres Malave, communications director for Americans for Prosperity, said of the governor's proposed legislation, "AFP applauds the governor for moving toward greater transparency in health care; but on the flip side, we are diametrically opposed to lawmakers dictating to companies, as this bill does, how they should run their businesses."
Other leading conservative think tanks echo pretty much the same thing:
The Heritage Foundation: "Proposals to restrain the cost of health care by imposing price controls ignore their long history of failure. Regulated prices prevent markets from efficiently allocating resources, leading to pervasive shortages and deteriorating quality, while stifling innovation and diverting care to inequitable black markets." From "Legislating Low Prices: Cutting Costs or Care?" -- Aug. 9, 2013.
The Federalist: "Price controls have never worked. In the over four thousand years of history — in Babylon, the Roman Empire, and into modern times in Communist countries, Nazi Germany, and in the United States with local controls on rent, and federal controls on gasoline and universal controls in the 1970s — there has never been a single instance of success where prices were controlled without serious damage." From "Why Medical Price Controls Are a Terrible Idea" -- April 25, 2014.
Reason Magazine: "...left-leaning health experts on hand talked up a technocratic alternative known as 'all-payer': Instead of the federal government serving as a universal insurer, as in single payer, the government would set payment rates for the entire system, public and private, eliminating price discrepancies for different payers.
"In other words, price controls. This is the great new idea that has gripped liberal health wonks as health costs have continued to rise: to simply have the government declare that prices must be lower. That's neither a new idea nor a particularly great one, and there’s little reason to think it will have result in meaningful restraint of health care cost growth." From "'All-Payer' Health Care Is Just 'Single-Payer' Health Care Using Government Price Controls" -- March 20, 2013.
There are other background pieces Gov. Scott should be reading and considering. For instance, he might want to remember that Bill Clinton threatened price controls as part of the Hillarycare plan in 1993. The idea was roundly debunked a year later. And, three years ago in Maryland, an "unsustainable" price control system led to calls for "spending controls" -- actually, totally government-run health care. Have a look at this.
I asked the governor last week in an email why his sudden change of heart regarding free market principles in health care after years of championing "competition" and free markets. I asked him which is his core belief, "free market principles in health care or price fixing in health care?"
I got this response from Jackie Schutz, communications director in the governor's office: "Patients deserve and demand transparency in hospital pricing and the Governor will continue fighting to change the current system no matter what reasons opponents have to keep things the way they are."
As always, I got an answer but not the answer.
A lot of people will have their eye on the governor's bill, watching closely how the largely conservative Legislature deals with it.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
