And Another Lesson

The last post dealt with the inability of the government to manage a relatively simple thing - providing wireless internet. (Yes, compared to the complexities of health care, that is a very simple thing). John Fund over at the Opinion Journal takes a look at ArnoldCare - California's attempt at putting in place a plan that is almost identical to Hillary Clinton's super "new" plan. (They are virtually identical because they were "incubated and hatched" by the same person.)

The two plans have many features in common. ArnoldCare's $12 billion-a-year price tag represents about a tenth of Mrs. Clinton's estimate for the costs of her plan, roughly in line with California's share of the national economy. Both include mandates to buy health insurance, a ban on premium differences based on health status, Medicaid expansion, and a requirement that insurers have to offer policies to all applicants.

All of this is the brainchild of Laurie Rubiner, who directed health-care issues at the liberal New America Foundation until she left in 2005 to become Mrs. Clinton's Senate legislative director. She was replaced by Len Nichols, who in 1993 served as the liaison between President Clinton's budget office and Mrs. Clinton's health-care task force. Ms. Rubiner isn't taking direct credit for selling Mr. Schwarzenegger on her plan, but aides to the governor confirm her role. Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation acknowledges that Ms. Rubiner "incubated and hatched" the ideas at the heart of the governor's plan. Ms. Rubiner declined to respond to a request for an interview.

Given the similarities, here are some political lessons that ArnoldCare might teach us about how Mrs. Clinton's plan might be received:

• The claim that no new bureaucracies are created will be challenged. Like Gov. Schwarzenegger, Mrs. Clinton envisions requiring everyone to prove they have health insurance. But she's vague on the details: "At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed." You can bet she will have some ideas.

Even so, making certain people have insurance is easier said than done. California has had a law mandating that drivers have car insurance since 1970 and has required physical proof of insurance to register a car for a decade. Even so, the Insurance Research Council says 25% of the state's drivers remain uninsured.

DO read it all. ArnoldCare is in serious trouble in the California legislature. There is no money to fund it and no real way to make it work. But you can bet that are lots and lots and lots of ways to make health care fail. The first one is to let the government control it.