Tag: medical insurance

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Big “Single-​Payer” Lie

Scan the history of government programs. The scope and costs usually grow much larger than originally projected.

Moreover, ham-​fisted government intervention distorts markets, causing shortages or excesses of supply, leading to high prices for goods that should be cheap, and so on.

When the problems pile up one can either repeal the controls or heap on more controls. 

Guess which “solution” politicians tend to prefer. 

Regarding medical care, the politicians’ answer to decades of government bungling is more bungling: regulation, subsidies, rationing, mandates and a new “public option” in health insurance to squeeze out private plans.

President Obama and other public option advocates promise, on stacks of Bibles, that this is not “somehow a Trojan horse for a single-​payer system.”

But they’re lying. Go to YouTube. Watch the videos of Obama and congressmen explicitly admitting their goal of a single-​payer system. Just two years ago, Obama was saying, “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s gonna be potentially some transition process.…”

That’s how we lose our freedoms. Not all at once, but a slice at a time. 

Oh, and about employer-​provided medical insurance. That’s a clumsy institution that exists because of World War II wage controls. We do have to transition out of that system. But we should “transition” towards more freedom, not less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Medical Insurance to the Max

Get everybody into a medical insurance plan, fast! But how?

Lots of “universal coverage” talk assumes that most uninsured folks are “too poor.” But look, most young people don’t buy insurance because they are healthy. And I know oldsters who have gone through life without medical insurance. When they’ve needed a shot, or a few stitches, they’ve visited the doctor and paid the bill.

Becky Akers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, wants to know why everyone wants to force her to buy something she thinks makes no financial sense.

Ms. Akers admits that, though she is healthy and without insurance, she could get run over by a bus. But she bets she can cover most medical needs out of her savings and income. 

Supporters of government managed medicine judge this irresponsible. 

And yet, many of these critics are the same folks who insist that catastrophic medical insurance — the kind that is inexpensive because of huge deductibles — cover everybody, regardless of pre-​existing conditions. But this turns insurance into a transfer program, workable only with high prices. Add full coverage rather than catastrophic, and medical insurance skyrockets beyond most people’s pay grade.

Yet if politicians would just stop tinkering with insurance, medical prices would come down for everyone, as Akers suggests … including, even the uninsurable, who would still require aid other than insurance.

If you are already sick, it’s too late to insure against sickness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.