That’s the headline on the Friday business page of the Daily Oklahoman. An AP story by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar entitled, “Feds design health insurance,” is more honestly labeled, “Fox Designs the Hen House.” What arrogance. Here’s a radical idea. Let’s have the free market provide insurance products tailored to individuals’ needs without federal mandates. How about this one: health insurance policies with no coverage for child birth or mental health. Let’s say you and your wife are 50 years old, finished having children and have no history of mental illness in your family. Cutting out those coverages saves you money and lowers your premium. But NO! The all-knowing bureaucrats living in the Distric of Criminals are going to mandate a “basic benfits package.” This includes: ..”outpatient, hospital, emergency, maternal, newborn and children’s care, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation, labs, prevention and wellness.”
What if this was more like car insurance. You could decide if you wanted basic liability coverage or comprehensive coverage. You could decide if you wanted uninsured motorist coverage. You could take a lot of the risk yourself with a high deductible, lowering your premium. But wait. The feds are mandating that you buy insurance coverage you don’t want or need. Don’t have children? Too bad, you get to pay for that coverage. Willing to take the risk that alchoholism or schizophrenia isn’t in your future? Too bad, you get to pay.
And why were we told health insurance was so expensive? The goons behind this scam are too numerous to list. What sort of profit do you think an insurance company stands to make by selling coverage that no one will use? Or even better…how about making you buy coverage for something to which you will have no access? What sort of money has already changed hands to make sure that this or that medical service got on the “basic benefit package?” Let me see…a large corporation that owns mental health centers says to their elected representative….”people won’t buy our services on their own. Help me find a way to make them pay us whether they use us or not.”…or something like that.
The only answer is for government at all levels to get out of the health care business. If the free market is not allowed to allocate resources, malinvestment will always be the result. That some arrogant bureaucrats think they can design a health insurance policy that remotely meets the needs of individuals and allows for the best allocation of resources is unfortunately typical. And remember: insurance companies can deny payment for services rendered. Government can now deny treatment for illnesses. Time to wake up.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
I absolutely agree with your blog and especially the term District of Criminals. These self righteous , self indulgent, narcissistic, socialistic thieves have robed all of our pockets to accommodate their reelection to fulfill there need to control. They appeal to the masses who do not have jobs or are required to do anything but live off the government tit. The sad thing is they have the same vote as I , who works three jobs and my wife works two jobs just so the socialist government can extort more money from us. I think in the future there will be fewer and fewer people to extort money from because these people are going to give up trying to achieve the American dream of attaining wealth. It has become far to easy to let every one to take care of me and I can sleep late and watch TV all day AND STILL EAT. What incentive would anyone have to achieve?
This Government and all who suck off her tit will soon run out of other peoples money and then what will happen?
Micheal W. Ingram
Comment by Mike Ingram — October 9, 2011 @ 5:41 pm
As if government intrusion into the healthcare market hasn’t caused enough problems already. The technocrats always respond to failure by demanding more power to the technocrats.
Comment by Paul Harris — October 10, 2011 @ 10:15 am