Republicans, Immunize Against Socialism With A Sniffle

Republicans, who have developed a sudden distaste for intellectual combat, must decide soon where they stand on the issue of socialized medicine.

President Clinton threw down the gauntlet in his State of the Union address, when he proposed guaranteeing health insurance for at least half of the 10 million American children who have none.

Clinton revived the notion that politicians should measure compassion by federal expenditures, warbling that a nation as tender as ours surely could part with a paltry sum of $1.7 billion a year - less than the cost of a single Stealth bomber - to save the children.

As compelling as that sounds, his argument has a few holes.

For example, it addresses a non-problem. Of the 40 million men, women and children who have no health care coverage today, 30 million will have policies within six months. The majority of those who remain uncovered refuse to obtain insurance because they’re young, cheap or devoted to religions that spurn medical treatment.

As for the 10 million uninsured kids: More than half live in families that have healthy incomes - $30,000 or more - or qualify for Medicaid. Contrary to popular opinion, the 10 million aren’t a bunch of consumptive waifs. The composition of the group changes daily. My own daughter had no insurance for one month in 1993, and my son had no coverage for the first 15 months of his life (mainly because I goofed up the insurance paperwork).

There’s a dirty little secret about the insurance gap, which is that it’s more a regional than national concern. Three of four uninsured Americans are recent immigrants, and the states with the highest rates of non-coverage all rest on our southern border: New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas and Louisiana. This underscores the fact that most people lack insurance not because of poverty, but transience - moving to new jobs or homes.

Now, turn to the merits of KiddieCare. Clinton’s plan ignores the thing that makes insurance costly and frustrating. The tax code lets corporations deduct 100 percent of their health care premiums, but it won’t let you or me write off a penny. As a result, insurers cater to vast corporations - which provide the bulk of insurance coverage - rather than individual workers.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, seems to be the only member of Congress who understands this. He has proposed granting full insurance premium deductibility to families with taxable incomes below 300 percent of the poverty line ($46,800 for a family of four).

His change would give insurance companies an incentive to craft coverage for each family, the way they now can customize homeowners policies. In the end, employers would fork over less for health care - and could pay higher salaries - because employees would purchase care on their own. Medical costs would dip because consumers would shop more carefully for treatment, getting coverage that fits their budgets and needs.

There’s a final problem with KiddieCare. It won’t remain cheap. No open-ended entitlement does. When the president says we “must give families access to affordable, quality health care,” he’s puffing smoke. Families have that already.

KiddieCare is a Trojan stethoscope, designed to make federally guaranteed health care seem normal and reasonable. The president’s budget contains provisions to extend the ideal of guaranteed “help” to other parts of the public. It creates entitlements for AIDS patients, randy teenagers, victims of infectious diseases, Indians, Veterans, drug abusers, unvaccinated kids and families of those wracked with Alzheimer’s.

As with Medicare last year, the president is daring Republicans to say no. With a catch in his voice and a tear in his eye, he has offered his sentimentality - and our tax dollars - as balm to all who suffer. Meanwhile, he has silenced critics of his ClintonCare bill by making sure insurers and doctors still get a big slice of the action.

Yet he is offering socialism with a sniffle - a plan that, taken to its logical conclusion, would produce something closely resembling Clinton’s original ill-fated scheme. Republicans know this, and yet most fear to act. They know they must refute a president who has no peer when it comes to hugging, weeping or looking dolefully at a child racked by infirmity or disease.

But hard cases make for stronger political parties. If Republicans don’t hop on the Gramm bandwagon - or something like it - they not only will revive ClintonCare. They will sanctify the Big Compassion rhetoric that drove postwar Europe first into the arms of socialism and then into bankruptcy.

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