A bill (HR 2355) that would allow U.S. residents to purchase health insurance in any state serves as a "vivid example" of Republican efforts to provide U.S residents with more "choice," but "what conservatives in this country never mention is that giving us these new choices also means taking something away -- typically, programs that make us more secure," Jonathan Cohn, senior editor at the New Republic, writes in an opinion piece. "At first blush," the legislation, sponsored by Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), "seems utterly sensible," in part because it would allow residents to "shop for insurance the same way they should for consumer goods," Cohn writes. However, he writes, health insurance "isn't just another sweater you can return to L.L. Bean if it arrives with holes in it," and residents "won't have somebody to warn them if they are about to purchase a defective policy." Cohn adds that the bill would "flood consumers with new options, overwhelming the regulators, many of whom already feel undermanned in the fight against scam artists." In addition, the legislation would eliminate state regulations that require health insurers to cover "cancer screening, psychiatric treatment and other services that most Americans rightly deem essential," he writes. According to Cohn, the bill would leave some of the sickest residents with "no choices at all" for health insurance, and state high-risk health coverage pools would prove "woefully inadequate" to address their needs. The "best way to fix" the U.S. health insurance system is to "create one big pool of beneficiaries through some kind of universal health insurance system" that would allow residents to select from "well-regulated private health plans" or from all physicians and hospitals under a system that "bypasses insurance companies altogether," Cohn writes. He concludes, "Those aren't the kind of choices that conservatives want to give Americans, since they happen to require expanding government. But they're the kind of choices Americans would appreciate the most" (Cohn, The New Republic, 8/22).