Gov. Ed Rendell's health care reform proposal is one step forward and four steps backward, Michael Cannon says.

"There's a lot of mandating of taxing and spending," says Cannon, who also criticizes the plan for overregulating insurance, hospitals and people's lifestyles.

Cannon is giving his take on Rendell's "Prescription for Pennsylvania" plan today during a speech in Harrisburg.

Cannon is from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. He's speaking  at the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think tank that also supports limited government.

Rendell's plan does have some good features, Cannon says. He likes its proposal to free up physician assistants, nurse practitioners and others to practice to the full extent of their abilities, "out from under the thumb of doctors," he says.

He also likes the plan to put health-care clinics in places like Wal-Marts, saying people will have access to convenient, low-cost care.

But Cannon doesn't like Rendell's plan to require everyone over 300 percent of the poverty level, plus undergraduate and graduate students, to purchase health insurance. Rendell's plan does not provide assistance for these folks to purchase coverage, he says.

Cannon also does not like the proposal to impose a 3 percent tax on  the payroll of employers who opt not to provide health insurance. That tax, he says, will be paid for by workers, not the employers, in the form of lower wages or job elimination.

Cannon says Rendell's plan also overregulates health insurance, giving the insurance commissioner the power to approve all rate increases. And it overregulates hospitals, proposing to reward high-quality care, which will be a difficult thing to define.

Cannon also dislikes Rendell's proposal to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces.

Restaurants and bars, for example, should be free to choose whether or not to provide a smoking section, depending on what their customers want, he says. People, he says, should be able to choose whether or not they want to go into an establishment with a smoking section.

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