Government should not compete with insurance companies
February 16th, 2009 | by Brian Schwartz |What if someone had a great idea for a better mousetrap, but insisted that it be a “public mousetrap” funded by taxpayers? Would you believe that it’s better, or would you suspect that the inventor had an agenda beyond creating a better product?
Frank Clemente at the Institute for America’s Future is like this mousetrap inventor. He writes that “private insurance market … needs competition from a public health insurance plan to lower skyrocketing premiums.”
What’s striking is that Clemente proposes the government compete with insurance companies. What? If he thinks he can figure out a way to offer a better product, then he should go out there and start an insurance company! Or he could be a consultant to one. Maybe if Mr. Clemente did he’d realize what kinds of mandates and prohibitions insurance companies deal with. Describing the insurance market as “private” is a misnomer given how much politicians interfere with what should be a private decision between insurers and consumers.
He has some nerve to propose that government force taxpayers to fund his great idea. That’s not fair at all. I mean, if his idea is so good, then why must he make a crime for people not to contribute to it? (Try not paying the part of your tax bill that would fund the “public plan.”)
I don’t know who said this first, but: Our freedom is more important than this guy’s great idea.
The scary part of this “public plan” is that it’s a huge step toward government’s taking over the insurance industry, as I’ve written here.
If the “public plan” is so good, show, do not tell. Show us by creating a better product on the the (unfree) market, and let consumers decide. Do not tell us it’s better and make it a crime for taxpayers not to fund it.
Government should not compete with insurance companies. Its proper role is to protect each of our individual rights to associate with one another on a voluntary basis. For health care, this would be a free market in health insurance, not the politically-controlled market that currently burdens us.
tags: Medicare, Public Health Plan
