Caledonian Record on Healthcare Compromise

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Jim Dandy To The Rescue

Caledonian-Record Editorial

May 12, 2006


Despite all kinds of advance warning, the Democrats presented Gov. Douglas with a medical care bill that he promised to veto, because they included in it a poison pill timed to go off in three years. Douglas wanted three years to test private providers' adequacy to provide insurance, followed by a study and resultant recommendations. The Democrats wanted the state to take over automatically in three years if private insurers didn't satisfy them.

That was a poison pill, a political roadside bomb, an IED, whatever you want to call it. It would have led, inevitably, to a government-owned and -operated health-care system (read socialized medicine), the fond wish and dream of the Democrats, despite the fact that socialized medicine hasn't worked anywhere its been tried.

Common sense and, a rare occurrence in Montpelier, the spirit of compromise, ruled the day. Democrats and the governor effected a meeting of the minds in a further negotiating session, and the Legislature produced a bill that is acceptable to the governor. The Democrats' willingness to compromise probably came about from the fact that the governor has a veto-sustaining number of votes in the House, but it is commendable nonetheless.

What a disappointment the agreement must be to Scudder Parker, Democratic candidate for governor. When it looked like a veto was inevitable, Parker, like Jim Dandy, came galloping to the rescue. In a statement harshly critical of the governor, he said, "If I were governor, we would be talking about a very different bill." Parker went on to describe what he would do. He would roll state and public employees, Medicaid and Medicare recipients, and the general public into one state-controlled, state-financed system (read socialized medicine). He would raise taxes as far as he had to to finance it. He refused to call his system "single payer" because, he said, that term has become politically charged and distorted, i.e. everybody knows that "single payer" means socialized medicine financed by large tax increases and marked by deteriorating health services. Now, there need not be a rescue because the compromise is just dandy, and Parker has lost his major campaign issue, at least for the time being.

What Parker wants to do is another experiment in socialism, a political system that has failed 100 percent of the time in 100 percent of the places it has been tried. When Parker said, "If I were governor," we said, "Thank goodness, you aren't."