via hilker (note, this quote contributes to the commentary below and was substituted for the one hilker had):
While the President’s concern for the uninsured is no doubt sincere, his plan amounts to a magnanimous gift to the health insurance industry, despite any implications to the contrary.
For decades the insurance industry has been lobbying for mandated coverage for everyone. Imagine if the cell phone industry or the cable TV industry received such a gift from government? If government were to fine individuals simply for not buying a corporation’s product, it would be an incredible and completely unfair boon to that industry, at the expense of freedom and the free market. Yet this is what the current healthcare reform plans intend to do for the very powerful health insurance industry.
The stipulation that pre-existing conditions would have to be covered seems a small price to pay for increasing their client pool to 100% of the American people. A big red flag, however, is that they would also have immunity from lawsuits, should they fail to actually cover what they are supposedly required to cover, so these requirements on them are probably meaningless. Mandates on all citizens to be customers of theirs, however, are enforceable with fines and taxes.
The above notwithstanding, I completely disagree. The President’s plan is not a handout to the insurance industry. It is a handout to the drug industry. I think that the government bureaucracy will trump the insurance bureaucracy, especially given that the public option won’t have to pay taxes. Also, it is extremely unlikely that the final plan will do away with differences in state regulations, which the public option will freely ignore (having the public option ignore these regulations is a good thing for those enrolled in the public option and it reduces administration costs).
When the US Constitution was conceived, there was a general idea that the states could provide different regulations on such things and the Federal government would only be responsible for protecting against incursions on liberty. This would allow people to move to the state that had the best regulations for them, as the ultimate vote against bad policies. “If you don’t like it here, leave” was actually pretty close to the stated state-level government check. This clearly changed during the Lincoln presidency (for better or worse, though critics must acknowledge the difficulty of ensuring civil rights for blacks while maintaining the old model. I must disclose that I am such a critic, but I also must admit the political difficulties of having history unfold any other way). The fact that insurance is regulated at the state level is applauded by proponents of state rights, which includes most libertarians, but it ignores the reality that has transpired since the Lincoln presidency. There should have been more cooperation between states to allow out-of-state health insurance purchases (and, for those libertarians that support strict Constitutional/Federalist Papers interpretations, doesn’t the Constitution itself make provisions that contracts in one state are valid in another? So shouldn’t people be allowed to buy insurance from another state? [parenthetical squared: I am aware that states have laws governing contract language, and contracts in one state are not generally applicable in another state without a judicial decree, but … damn]). Current insurers are going to have an uphill battle. On the other hand, drug manufacturers maintain their ridiculous protections against the market reducing prices.
How many wrongs does it take to make a right?
