One of the most refreshing things about liberals is their utter refusal to live in the real world. It’s rather cute, actually – unless they are in power.
Lately I’ve been watching liberals defend their new health care bill by talking about how popular it will be to force insurance companies to cover more people and to expand their coverage to include pre-existing conditions, among other things. And in the abstract, these things will indeed be popular.
But in the real world where most of us live, when the government requires that insurance companies cover more people and provide more coverage, adding tremendous costs to their bottom line, these “evil” companies — who after all employ millions of people, most of whom buy homes and take care of families and pay taxes — are required to do one of two things — 1) raise rates through the roof, or 2) go out of business, thus adding to Barack Obama’s amazing record of job elimination.
In the first case, as prices rise, fewer people can afford health insurance without government help, so more of us are dependent.
But in the second case – when insurance companies go out of business — their former workers lose their homes, lose their health insurance, and no longer pay taxes so government revenue falls.
(Of course, these rules apply to every evil, corrupt business that the government decides makes too much money and needs to “share” more. And as more businesses close due to draconian taxes, states go broke – hello California and New Jersey – and can’t provide a quality education or basic social services.)
But in this case, at least the liberals feel good about providing universal health coverage – except there will be fewer insurance companies left and they are making less money, so there is less competition and as a result, rates increase even more.
Simple economics are a lot like gravity. You don’t have to like the rules of gravity, but it’s really foolish to step off a cliff in the belief that, just this time, the rules don’t apply. You may not like the economic truths of the real world, but they exist.
This does NOT mean insurance companies are all good, or that they should not operate under a moral framework that includes compassion for the insured and for employees.
But if you really want to provide more access to health care, you work on reducing costs – by allowing more competition – across state lines, for example. You promote tort reform, and stop letting charlatans like John Edwards get rich suing doctors over mistakes, which raises malpractice rates for physicians and adds to health care costs.
You trust the American people — the same people who chose VHS over Beta, the Mustang over the Edsel and Kris Allen over Adam Lambert — to choose insurance companies that are fair and treat their members decently, and to punish companies that are rotten and ruthless and mean and incompetent.
But those choices didn’t exist much already, thanks to current governmental intrusion, and now they exist even less. And that’s really sad, and real people are going to be hurt by this.