A Textbook Case of How to NOT Reform Healthcare

This ephemeral bit of health care policy drivel from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)* is not only nonsense, it's also reckless and dangerous:

[A]s DeMint sees it, Americans would be given vouchers -- $2,000 dollars for individuals, up to $5,000 for families -- to go buy private insurance. Voila, universal coverage.

How would this lower health care costs? DeMint doesn't say, probably because it wouldn't lower costs at all. Instead of using competition to challenge insurers, DeMint would instead direct untold millions to insurance companies. He'd pay for it by scrapping TARP.

What happens when TARP money runs out? DeMint doesn't know. What happens with Americans who can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions? DeMint doesn't know. What's to stop employers from scrapping their own plans and simply telling their employees to take the DeMint voucher? DeMint doesn't know. What happens when costs continue to spiral out of control? DeMint doesn't know.

Andrew Leonard said the South Carolina senator's "plan" takes us "to a Republican fantasy-land so devoid from any moorings in reality that one is forced, willy-nilly, to admire it, irrespective of its merits. It takes true chutzpah to pull something like this off."

In a nutshell, proposals like this from DeMint and other ultraconservative legislators would have one primary effect: pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of existing health insurance companies without doing anything to address costs.

Sound familiar? Yep, it's exactly what the Republican-led Congress did under Premier Bush when they gleefully shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of pharmaceutical companies when they enacted Medicare Part D.

Enacting a ridiculous policy like this would be at least a billion times worse than doing nothing.

* WTF is up with politicians from South Carolina!?!