“Healthy Wisconsin” is the most ambitious attack on the free health care marketplace in America. The single payer system was dropped into the Wisconsin budget at the last minute and has stirred a hornet’s nest of debate ever since. The plan’s sponsors tout “Healthy Wisconsin” as guaranteeing insurance for everybody at a lower price than we are now paying. For good measure, they even held out the prospect of a tax cut. (In the halls of the Capitol, when senators want to divert attention, they talk about a tax cut.)

In spite of these lofty promises, this plan must be rejected. I’ve written separately about it being the largest tax increase in the history of Wisconsin – the plan is funded with a 14.5 percent tax on payroll that is guaranteed to grow every year – and that it will cause thousands of jobs to leave Wisconsin, and that for some reason unions are allowed to opt out of this health care system that is intended for everyone.

My problem is that the plan passed by the Wisconsin Senate turns my health care over to my government. Apparently for the Senate it isn’t enough to tell me what I will have to pay and what plans I can choose. They step way over the line when they also want to tell my doctor how he should practice medicine.

You won’t hear any of the advocates talk about exactly how “Healthy Wisconsin” will control health care costs, but right there in the language of the legislation they spell it out. In a section of the law titled, “Containment of Health Care Cost,” is a requirement that the Secretary of Administration “… establish, by rule, a program to contain health care costs in this state during any year in which the board determines that health care costs increase at a rate exceeding the national average of medical inflation …”

The Secretary of Administration? That’s right, the Secretary of Administration is given the job of holding down health costs; a job sandwiched in the law between setting the rental rates for state buildings and overseeing a computerized personnel system.

To see exactly how this will work we need look no further than the way the government controls costs under Medicare. A recent news article revealed that the federal government thought that too many physicians were ordering MRI scans. So they cut back on the number of allowable scans. Just like that, the government changed the way physicians practice medicine.

In Wisconsin it will be the Secretary of Administration that will determine who can have an MRI scan, which prescription drugs are approved, how much pain I need to endure before my knee is replaced, etc.

This is the dirty little secret that advocates for universal health care never mention. They contain costs by rationing care. It is this rationing that chaffs people throughout Canada and Europe. They envy the speed with which Americans can have our medical needs met.

Many of the supporters of this “Healthy Wisconsin” plan have advocated keeping government out of the bedroom. For me, I’d like to keep government out of the examining room.

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