16 July 2009

While You Are Sleeping

I continue to ask in vain, as I wave my arms in the air: "You who voted for this, start defending it!"

It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn't be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans' lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It's scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we'll come across in the final 1,002.

The real problem here is 47% of America ran outside, got fired up, went to rallies, covered their Kerry/Edwards stickers with Obama/Biden stickers, voted, partied, and then completely disappeared and have no idea what's going on.

1 comment:

Nature66 said...

Oh yes we do. Private insurance companies can go the way of the dodo. There's no medical reason for their existence. All they do is sit there and take a cut. A huge cut. Under the current system, there's no marketplace. You get whatever coverage your company chooses. So, under the current system, your health care is chosen by your HR department. NOT by you. If you think your HR department is interested in anything but saving the company money, you're kidding yourself.

The point is to take the profit out of health insurance. Not everything in America needs to be run at a profit. Greed is not good medicine.