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The last thing struggling businesses need in this weak economy is a mandate from the federal government requiring them to provide health insurance to their employees. That’s the message business groups are sending as Congress prepares to tackle comprehensive health care reform next year. Both President-elect Barack Obama’s health care plan and the vision for reform outlined by Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, require employers to provide insurance or pay fees to a government coverage fund. Small businesses would receive tax credits to cover some of the costs, and those that still couldn’t afford it would be exempt from the “play or pay” requirement. Neither Obama nor Baucus, D-Mont., has specified a threshold for this small business exemption, however. Also yet to be defined is the minimum coverage that businesses would have to provide. [It has been speculated] that Obama might back off on an employer mandate in light of the huge job losses — 533,000 in November alone — the U.S. economy is suffering. – Biz Journal From a free-market standpoint, nationalized health care will not deliver the goods but will only result in long waits and rationing. In the UK, nationalized health care has resulted in an ever-decreasing pool of services and an ever-increasing pool of untreated patients. Canada has had to consider reconfigurations of its national health care and of course the kind of state run health care that afflicted the Soviet Union and its satellite states was known to be primitive and even brutal.

We will be interested to see exactly what kind of health care service Barack Obama’s administration promises and tries to deliver. Already, the “administration elect” has floated the idea of setting up a state-run health care operation to compete against private entities. Those suspicious of such an idea point out that that state-run efforts can be subsidized in numerous ways; that the numbers can be massaged to make the public attempt seem considerably more successful than it is.

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