Selling Tax Hikes as Universal Insurance

There is a heavy freight train rolling downhill and New Mexico’s economic future is tied to the tracks. What am I talking about? Just the biggest, most expensive mandate to hit New Mexico businesses and taxpayers in a long, long time: universal insurance (subscription required).
I previously reported the fact that Mathematica, the firm analyzing three different proposals for New Mexico health care, had said that a single-payer system would be cheaper than the system now in place. Now, according to the Journal article today, it is said that all three proposals would save money compared to today’s system. This, despite the fact that the single-payer and “voucher” systems would require new payroll taxes of between 4 and 8 percent!
I’m not buying it. How many times have well-paid consultants and analysts tried to tell us that down was up and 2 + 2 was 5 in order to sell some new government program? The truth is that government intervention in the market has caused most of the problems we are dealing with in health care today and bigger, more ambitous government programs will only multiply those woes.