State Rep. Paul Volenik’s ideas for universal health coverage paid for and managed by the government are a prescription for disaster. Like all statists the end justifies the means. So his prescription is filled with half-truths. This is usual for the Hancock County Democrats.

The most obvious problem with government run health care is that it has never worked in industrialized countries with viable economies. Maine does not now have a viable economy. The politicians in Augusta have driven us into a deep recession. Another problem he brushes off with palaver is the medical necessity and access determination. All government run programs fail to take care of the four percent of patients who have complex illnesses and problems. These include, but are not limited to, congenital heart defects and very ill cancer patients who need advanced state of art care and therapy. The United States is the place these patients come because their foreign-run government programs just allow them to fade away by not treating them.

The numbers and costs are not presented in a dynamic manner. Recently health care insurance rates have risen in response to rising health care costs. The simplistic funding plan presented by Rep. Volenik speaks legions about the future disaster we will face but is presented based on year old health care costs. Costs for private insurance respond quickly to the marketplace. The state will not respond quickly and will have to limit care within the two-year budget plan. Maine is running deficits and cannot afford pouring money into a dynamic changing health care industry.

The other area that is not even thought of is the free care or charitable patients. Maine Coast Memorial Hospital gave away or wrote off $800,000 of free care for the indigent. These patients will now be insured and the hospitals will be reimbursed. Since there never was a charge for these patients the numbers will never appear in the original plan. Their cost will be remarkably higher than predicted. But when there is no money left all good statists like Volenik and his henchmen will ask us to conserve and sacrifice for the greater good. This is the typical remedy of the state run systems short of funds and the ultimate result is the primitive system of medical care now practiced in the Soviet Union.

The concept that doctors will determine your health care access and needs in a state run system is another half-truth. Doctors will determine what and how much health care you will receive based on the rules set down by the payer. In this case it is a state bureaucracy. One only has to look at the way the Department of Human Services runs the child welfare and social work system for an example of the shabby, arbitrary and deadly results inherent in the state-run system.

If the present legislators who are behind this program really wanted to be first in the nation they would present a positive plan that gets both the insurance companies and the government out of the power position in health care. That system is available and viable. It is patient power oriented and allows both the patient and their physician choice. I will present that positive plan as a prescription for choice and individual freedom in my next letter to the editor.

Davis Hart, D.O., FACOS is a Libertarian from Surry.