Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Will Obama's health care plan outlaw private insurance?

From IBD:
Still Not An Option

EXCERPTS: "Not fully trusting our own interpretation, we asked for confirmation from the House Ways and Means Committee. Sources there agreed: The bill would indeed shut down the individual private health care insurance market.

Our impression was further confirmed Monday when Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking member on Ways and Means, told us that "any existing plan will not be able to enroll members." There will be "a prohibition," the Michigan Republican said, "on enrolling individuals in private health plans" after the bill becomes law in 2013.

It was also confirmed by Ways and Means staff director Cybele Bjorklund, who, in response to questions from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin during a committee markup session, admitted last week that insurance providers "cannot create new policies outside of that window outside of the exchange.""

. . .

"In trying to prove the exchange will be a private market, the bill's own supporters actually prove our point. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., complains in a letter on the next page that last week's editorial is "factually incorrect and highly misleading" yet admits three paragraphs later that outside the exchange, providers "can't continue to market" existing "policies to new customers."

Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also claims the legislation "will create a transparent insurance marketplace," apparently unaware that government cannot create a market. The government can create coalitions of private companies, which are eventually co-opted by the state. And it has given itself the power to seize private companies, as with General Motors.

But it cannot fabricate a market. Anyone who thinks it can, does not know how markets work."
IBD's evidence looks pretty damning to me.
"The government can create coalitions of private companies, . . . "
Isn't that what fascist states do?

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the link. According to news reports, this bill, which is ever evolving, seems to be a classic example of nonobjective writing. No passage in it, apparently, says, "There shall be no private market in health insurance." But the effect of the bill is exactly that.

    I still haven't heard of any Republican politician saying publicly that this bill is wrong in principle. Perhaps in another 20 years some will.

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