The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Mandates, Regulation and ‘Rights’

Posted on | January 7, 2013 | 20 Comments

What was causing the problem to which ObamaCare was supposed to be the solution? If it was not clear before, it is becoming more so, now that the alleged solution is making the problem worse:

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

Government policies were causing the artificial scarcity of “affordable health care” (a glittering generality) and the new policies known as ObamaCare are aggravating the problem because they are, in effect, just more of the same. We had a lot more “affordable health care” before government decided that health care should be “free” (i.e., subsidized by taxpayers) for some patients, and then states began to mandate and regulate how employers and health-insurance companies should provide coverage to those paying their own premiums.

At about the same time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, egalitarianism took its Great Leap Forward as a matter of law and policy. The language of “rights” and “discrimination” gained currency, so that employer-provided health-insurance coverage became an entitlement which could not be denied without incurring legal jeopardy.

If health-care is a human right — as the Left proclaims — then certain logical consequences flow from that premise. Those who provide health care (doctors and hospitals) as well as those who are required to act as third-party payers (insurance companies or taxpayers) essentially become hostages in such a situation, with lawyers as the thugs sent to deliver the ransom demand on behalf of the kidnappers, the plaintiffs who are willing to sue to enforce their “rights.”

The free-market system is distorted and artificial scarcity is caused by what amount to government efforts to control prices. Dressed up in the language of “rights” and “fairness,” and promising to rid us of our woes, liberalism’s solutions inevitably create new problems.

Have you noticed that good intentions are becoming increasingly scarce? It’s a supply-and-demand problem, because liberals have lately been so incredibly busy paving the road to hell.

Hat-tip — unexpectedly! — to Instapundit, who has his own interesting news from the front lines of the War of Ideas: He was disinvited from speaking at a local Republican Party function in Utah because his opinions are too “controversial.” Evidently, it was the professor’s (dreadfully wrong) opinion in favor of same-sex marriage that offended the GOP officials. But they weren’t going to pay him for the speech anyway, so it’s no real loss to the professor, nor is there any incentive for me to offer myself as a substitute speaker, despite my outspoken opposition to same-sex marriage.

No one’s ever accused me of holding “controversial” opinions . . .

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Category: Health Care, Instapundit

Comments

  • http://twitter.com/thatMrGguy Mike G.

    As far as I’m concerned, Insurance is just legalized extortion.

    Re; same sex marriage, I could give a rat’s ass. That will be between “those people” and God when the time comes. I’ve got more pressing problems than whether or not Adam and Steve can get married or not. I’d prefer they didn’t, but…..

  • Steve Skubinna

    If you actually believed that “Health care reform” was about reducing costs and increasing access, then yes, I can see how you might be surprised.

    If you believed that it was about increasing government control over the economy and the citizens, plus a fat dose of crony capitalism and political payoffs, then why would you be?

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    “No one’s ever accused me of holding “controversial” opinions . . .”

    This from the guy with the Fort Sumter t-shirt and the “Best Two Out of Three?” caption…

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    The State has no business intruding itself into a civil contractual relationship between law abiding individuals, and it has less business trying to oblige religious institutions to redefine their own established relationships to accommodate same.

  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady
  • http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/ Evi L. Bloggerlady

    Insurance is legalized extortion when you are forced to pay the premiums.

  • JeffS

    Methinks that the artificial scarcity of “affordable health care” is a feature, not a bug.

    But I’m funny that way.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MJGP4QXZ5PRW2MFA5E25CV2WNU rosalie

    “It’s a supply-and-demand problem, because liberals have lately been so incredibly busy paving the road to hell.”
    And the Republicans have been helping the liberals “paving the road to hell.”

  • Pingback: Jackie Wellfonder - Raging Against the Rhetoric – Fairness Is Expensive

  • Quartermaster

    Fine with me. If Adam and Steve want such things, let them take out a contract and execute it in the manner of such things. Just don’t call it marriage cause it ain’t.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Hey, someone has to supervise.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    In other news, the Yellow Sky Federation is lobbying to be able to call the sky ‘yellow” instead of being forced—against their rights—to call it “blue.”

    The majority of you, of course, will be forced to follow suit, but only bigots and raaaaacists would fight this great expansion of our rights.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Once the right began to accept the language of the left, and moved from calling it “Insurance” to calling it “Benefits,” and then continually forced more and more “coverage”, the trainwreck was completely written in the code.

    This is example #39,701 of the lack of mental discipline on the right. Don’t let the left control the language.

  • http://twitter.com/richard_mcenroe richard mcenroe

    My point prezackly.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    This.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    This is what Jeff Goldstein has been writing about for over a decade now.

    http://proteinwisdom.com/

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    A is A.

    You can call it B, but it will always be A.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Yep! One sure sign of leftist derangement is the desire to change reality by changing the labels.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Dang. It has been that long, hasn’t it.

    Well, I’m not getting older. Just everyone else. Nope. Not playin’ that game.