Roger Kimball: The Reid Bill: coercive and unconstitutional

"On the one hand, the Reid Bill depends on a combination of huge general tax increases, which is coupled with special levies on industries such as medical-device and pharmaceutical companies. These tax revenues are then used to fund subsidies for large segments of the population in order to allow them to purchase qualified health-care plans that are sold through a set of State Exchanges that the Reid Bill creates. In order to prevent these subsidies from flowing through to the various health-insurance issuers, the Reid Bill imposes extensive obligations on any health-insurance issuer or health-plan provider that wishes to participate within the system in order to keep them from capturing subsidies meant for others. The effect of the subsidies is to increase the level of health care that will be demanded in the United States. The effect of the regulations is likely to be to impose huge costs on various health-insurance companies as they struggle to meet the influx of demand when they are at the outer limit of their capacity."