The Health Choices Czar and Regulating Insurance - WSJ.com

The Health Choices Czar and Regulating Insurance - WSJ.com: "The House version of ObamaCare is more destructive than the Senate version, though that's like comparing Krakatoa and Mount Vesuvius. At any rate, one of the main Democrat-on-Democrat bouts in their secret nonconference committee turns on who will regulate the insurance industry to within an inch of its commercial life.

Both bills blow up the individual and small-business insurance markets, to be replaced with new 'exchanges' in which people can buy heavily subsidized coverage and insurers will be told what rates they can charge consumers and what benefits they must cover. The Senate would create 50 exchanges and leave the regulation to state insurance commissioners, who would have to follow minimum (or rather, maximum) standards. The House prefers one national exchange and a new federal regulator called the Health Choices Administration.

The sole purpose of this office is to obliterate health choices: What really will be universal about 'universal coverage' is that all consumers will have to buy essentially one standard product that Washington decides is best. Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a flavor of what she expected of the new health choices commissioner when she said at a recent press conference that insurance companies 'will be crying out for a public option.'"