The governor’s sweeping health care proposal is an experiment. Because we want the best possible health care for all the people of Maine, we are concerned about the risk of failure, particularly for the poor. The governor can’t promise his plan will perform as advertised, because he can’t point to anywhere where it has worked. Gov. Baldacci is telling us he will increase taxes, reduce cost, and improve quality with a plan that has never delivered before.

Who can say this cure isn’t actually going to make the health care situation in Maine worse? What if local hospitals are pressured to close, larger numbers of doctors and health care providers take early retirement or move to a sunnier place? What if citizens in rural areas have to drive hours and have their family spend the night, rather than have their needs met locally? What if they have to wait to even receive care?

While the governor’s cure is experimental, the potential damage is well documented in places, such as Canada, that have introduced extensive command-and-control health care.

Things definitely can get worse. Policy-makers think they can command and control our delicate, interrelated health care system network. But we live in a country with open borders. If the governor’s new regulations are onerous enough and the incentives to do business are weak enough, people and companies may move. The governor’s plan assumes people will do as they are told and not leave the state, reducing the capacity of our system to provide care.

What is the rush? It took decades to get into this current quagmire. Gov. Baldacci wants to pass the most sweeping changes to our health care system in history and we have a month to do it? If his plan can’t stand up to careful study and consideration by those who will be directly affected, the plan must be flawed. Some say the sweeping federal health care policy proposed in the early 1990s failed because it moved slowly and the critics had time to point out the weaknesses. Don’t we want to find weaknesses?

This plan was written by the governor’s people. Now is the time to discuss it openly, broadly, publicly, for as long as it takes. Now is the time to let those with specific, detailed knowledge in their price of the health care system come into the political process.

Dr. Erik Steele, in his May 13 column, gave us a glimpse of the specific, detailed, local knowledge that the governor’s plan ignores. Because there are thousands of other people with equally important information, the governor’s people couldn’t possibly have known it all. Even if through the political process, the governor and the Legislature gather, digest and understand all the specific, detailed, local knowledge at the time of creating legislation, this body of knowledge continues to grow and evolve. A central plan, such as proposed, has limited ability to keep current.

I know of no instance where command-and-control health care provides a superior quality or quantity of care to our current system.

Certainly the New Brunswick and Quebec cancer patients treated in Bangor and Lewiston would agree that Canadian Medicare has devastating weaknesses.

The governor chose to propose a plan that created greater government intervention. We would do well to examine the successful policies that involve less government intervention. It is wise to understand that humans will always have challenges, as there is no Utopia. It is important to understand what a state government can and can’t do. When we try to make government into what we want, rather than what it is, we are always disappointed.

Let’s reject this experimental health care policy. It is time for the people of Maine to ask their governor and legislators to practice “evidence-based” public policy.

Betsy Chapman is the board chair of the Maine Public Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, free-market education and research organization based in Bangor. Its Web site can be accessed at www.maineinstitute.com.