You Can’t Expand Personal Choices Through More Government

Can you expand government spending by $1 trillion and not end up with more restrictions on individual choices and decisions? It can’t be done, says Newt Gingrich, writing in the Los Angeles Times.

“You cannot spend an additional $1 trillion of taxpayer money and reduce the role of government. You will get new bureaucracies, more regulation, more complexity. That means you will have less control of your health care.”

Among the ways in which you’ll lose control: One proposal in Congress will create an “essential benefits package,” which will determine what must be in your insurance policy—even stuff you’ll never use or have an interest in. (It’s sort of like forcing everyone who wants renter's insurance to buy coverage for the management company’s heating and ventilation system.) It also creates the “Health Choices Administration.” Yikes! I’d like to make my own choices, thank you very much.

“Those defending the bill claim rationing is not in any of its versions, and while that is technically true — no one wants rationing — the unprecedented power this legislation would grant to virtually unaccountable government agencies is all but certain to lead to rationing.”

(Cross-posted from State House Call.)

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