This, I agree with. But there, we part ways. In classic liberal fashion, Mr. Farmer engages in a bout of breathtaking evasion, ignoring the fact that the insurance system we have now is a government creation. Instead, he simply accepts the status quo as an example of a failure of private insurance, because "the private insurance bigwigs' ... chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest."
Of course, those profits are made possible by offering products that are in their customers' interest, a practice that is essentially forbidden under the very system he laments. Rather than remove those government restrictions and leave insurers free to pursue profits by satisfying their customers, he would rather place your healthcare fate in the hands of the government "whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong." In other words, your healthcare fortunes will be at the mercy of the latest ballot box mob, instead of your own judgement!
The Left is desperate to hang on to the statist controls thay have achieved thus far, and to use them as a springboard for further controls on the way to totalitarian socialized medicine.
I've left a detailed response at the Star-Ledger's website, which is published below. But I'd like also to draw attention to the remarks of docforfreedom, who has several comments posted for this article. He seems mostly right in his comments and a strong defender of the individual.
Here is my full commentary:
We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that fireman. All of the problems that ObamaCare allegedly addresses are government created. And like that fireman, the politicians - Democrats and many Republicans alike – now rush to fix the problems they created with massive new government interference into healthcare. The health insurance market is at the top of the list of government-created problems.
Today’s health insurance industry is a government created monstrosity. The “power” of the insurance companies derives directly from government interference into the market. Thanks to the tax and regulation-imposed employer-based, or third-party-payer, system, the insurance company works not for the consumer of healthcare, but for some third party. In other words, the consumer is not the customer. But that’s not the only problem. Thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefits – force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands of political pressure groups rather than market realities, and force coverages on consumers that they may not want or can afford. These mandates are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as “insurance”. The insurance companies are then protected from competition through interstate trade barriers - imposed by government.
The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. Our fireman proposes to save us from its own creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-crippled insurance market. Our employer-based system that Mr. Farmer laments is in the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, in which the private ownership is more of a mirage than a reality.
The only practical and moral solution is a free market in health insurance. Our current system is as far from a free market as one can imagine short of overt socialized medicine.
A free market is one based on the recognition of individual rights, which means the sanction of freedom of action. This freedom includes the rights of patients, insurers, their customers, doctors, medical products producers, and other healthcare professionals to freely contract with each other through voluntary trade to mutual advantage. The government’s role in a free market is limited but vital – to protect the rights of all concerned, including enforcement of contracts and prosecution of fraud and breech of contract. Otherwise, people should be free of governmental coercion, which is what the “free” in free market means.
Mr. Farmer is right that the employer-based - i.e., third-party-payer - system of health insurance is unraveling. It was inevitable, and a bad idea to begin with. But he misses the obvious: Our deteriorating employer-based health insurance system is a failure of statism, not freedom. Instead, he simply lauds supporters of totalitarian healthcare, - excuse me, ObamaCare in all of its guises – as “those who know something” and writes off opponents as ignorant. But this is only a evasion, and sets the stage for his monumental booby trap – that our only choice is between socialism and fascism:
“Who can we best trust to oversee health insurance? The federal government, with its spotty record for efficiency but whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong? Or the private insurance bigwigs whose chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest?”
The individual citizen who is free to “oversee” his own healthcare and health insurance needs doesn’t even warrant token consideration! Interesting, eh?
Mr. Farmer is dead wrong. The choice is not between government-run healthcare (socialized medicine) and the status quo (quasi government-run healthcare). The choice is between government-run medicine (in all of its incarnations) and a free market.
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