Rubio Would Save Roots of ObamaCare

Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio mistitles a recent Fox News op-ed. "My Three Part Plan for the Post-ObamaCare Era" might sound good to those who merely oppose the so-called Affordable Care Act, but it will disappoint anyone who realizes that government meddling in any part of the economy is incompatible with freedom and prosperity (i.e., someone who supports free individuals and free markets):

Third, we must save Medicare and Medicaid by placing them on fiscally sustainable paths. Without reforms, these programs will eventually cease to be available for those that need them. I believe we must move Medicaid into a per-capita cap system, preserving funding for Medicaid's unique populations while freeing states from Washington mandates. Medicare, meanwhile, should be transitioned into a premium support system, empowering seniors with choice and market competition, just like Medicare Advantage and Part D already do.

This part of Rubio's plan may look like an aberration, but it follows a proposal to mix needed loosening of government control of insurance companies with what he calls "federally-supported, actuarially-sound high risk pools". Controls breed controls as the precedent for government intervention leads to calls for more of the same to "correct" for market distortions caused by earlier "corrections" of the market. That's how we got the ACA in the first place and staying that course can only rid us of it in name or saddle us with something even worse.

This reminds me of something I said about Paul Ryan a few years back:

[Paul] Ryan, who imagines that such programs as Social Security and Medicaid can be "reformed," ... is no capitalist. (Otherwise, he'd be clear that the best way to "encourage" competition is for the government to stop manipulating the economy altogether, and would speak of phasing out instead of reforming entitlement programs.)

We can just about swap the names out, here.

Perhaps Senator Rubio could have gone with, "My Plan to Tee Up My Democratic Successor", but I'm open to other suggestions.

-- CAV