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Not So Strange Health-Care Bedfellows
Sheldon Richman
Campaign
For Liberty
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
One thing can be said in behalf of the health-insurance
overhaul currently shaping up in Washington: it has revealed
the curious bedfellows that politics creates. Congress almost
certainly will pass a bill that compels every American to have
medical insurance. If his employer doesn’t offer it, he’ll
have to buy it himself or be fined.
This justifiably offends everyone who believes in individual
freedom. By what right do politicians order us to buy medical
coverage? They say they have a good reason: if everyone were
forced to buy health insurance, the premiums would be lower
for sick people, who file more claims than healthy people do.
I mean no disrespect to sick people, but that’s a lousy
reason to force the healthy to buy insurance they don’t
want. In a really free society, force would be used only to
protect innocent life from aggression. Keeping insurance premiums
down falls short of that standard.
It turns out that a lot of other people think so too. In several
states there are moves to block the insurance mandate. For example,
in Arizona voters will vote on a state constitutional amendment
to prohibit forced participation in any health-care plan. And
the Los Angeles Times reports that “a group of more than
a dozen state attorneys general ... are exploring whether the
mandate is unconstitutional.” The Times quotes Florida
Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum: “It’s a tax on living.”
The newspaper adds that McCollum “drew a distinction from
the requirement that people buy auto insurance: Drivers make
a choice to own a car.” Actually, car insurance is tied
to the use of the roads, and even private road owners would
have the right to admit only insured drivers to their property.
Moreover, drivers are required only to have liability insurance;
they are free to forgo coverage for their own cars.
So here’s the odd bedfellows angle: while big-government
opponents (and Republican opportunists) are gearing up to fight
the insurance mandate, guess who’s all gung-ho for it
besides the Democrats: the insurance companies!
Savor that for a moment. For a full year President Obama and
his congressional allies have bashed those companies as the
devil incarnate: They won’t cover people who are already
sick; they cancel policies after people get sick; they impose
annual and lifetime benefit limits; they resist paying benefits;
they charge sick people higher premiums than healthy people
— and on and on. No self-respecting health-care “reformer”
would be caught dead in the same room with these nefarious profit-driven
guys. Right?
Wrong.
The “reformers” have been in locked rooms with
them regularly in what can only be called a conspiracy against
the public. What unites them enough to overcome their few differences?
The insurance mandate. Since the legislative process started
a year ago, one element has been unquestioned: compulsory insurance.
True, Obama opposed an individual mandate during his campaign
for president. He needed to distinguish himself from his pro-mandate
opponent, Hillary Clinton. But once Clinton was safely ensconced
in the State Department, Obama came around. Dash the campaign
promise.
There’s really no need to explain why the insurance industry
has been eager to accept every provision demanded by the Democrats
(except the “public option”) — including coverage
for preexisting conditions, guaranteed renewal, and price uniformity
regardless of health — as long as the mandate is in the
bill. Under a mandate the industry would have millions of new
captive customers, mostly healthy young people who will pay
premiums but make few claims. This will mean huge new politically
derived profits. In economics, it’s called rent-seeking
— a form of privilege.
In fact, the insurance industry has only one complaint. The
penalty for not complying with the mandate is too low! “We
think there’s more that [the legislation] needs to do,”
America’s Health Insurance Plans spokesman Robert Zirkelbach
said. “There’s still a strong incentive for people
to wait until they are sick to purchase insurance.”
In other words, the insurance industry is willing to cover
all comers if everyone is effectively forced to buy its product.
Freedom is trashed whenever “reformers” and the
industry they seek to “reform” get behind closed
doors.
"When the people find they can vote themselves
money, that will herald the end of the republic."
- Fall Of The Republic - Buy
the DVD here
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