Tarheel Pundit

According to Jed Lewison, the White House thinks that liberals will agree to health care reform that includes mandates to buy private insurance in lieu of a public option.  Let me bust out my Southern-ness for a second:  do what?  Is it possible that the White House is not only out of touch with mainstream America, but also their own end of the political spectrum?  How can forcing folks to purchase (*gasp*  PURCHASE!!!  Not get for “free,” but purchase!) private health insurance ever be appealing to the far left?  It’s not appealing to anyone, minus the folks in private insurance who will be guaranteed to keep their jobs.  I can’t imagine doctors will like this either, as this has the potential to mesh the lowball payments of medicare/medicaid with the red tape of private insurance.  I see a couple of things happening if a mandate of this type is voted into law:

• Shoddy, “paycheck advance” type health insurance businesses will open in abundance, selling low-quality coverage and ripping off folks left and right who can’t afford “good” insurance, but have to meet the mandate or be penalized by the IRS (if they are indeed paying taxes).
• Low-income individuals/families will be given subsidies to cover monthly insurance premiums.  Taxpayers will foot the bill.  What would a mandate accomplish, exactly, if we’re still paying for others to get health care?
• Insurance companies will be put between a rock and a hard place, forced to make a deal with the devil to even stay in business.  The government, no doubt, will dictate their bottom line and provide the subsidies to pay the insureds’ premiums.  They will effectively become Medicare-like entities, paying doctors and hospitals less per procedure/doctor visit than it costs in overhead to run the facility. Doctors will be paid less, but won’t be able to “make it up in volume” despite the fact that everyone under the sun (and the sun DOES shine in Mexico, you know) will be lining up in the doctor’s offices for every cough, tickle in the throat, scraped elbow and blistered thumb.
• All the negative impacts of socialized medicine will still come to fruition, despite the fact that this is supposedly a private sector venture.

The only potential upside I can see if this does come to pass, is that perhaps they’ll lift regulations and allow people to buy insurance across state lines.  Typing that out seems so ludicrous – we are not allowed to purchase things across state lines according to the federal government!

Some will be tempted to draw a parallel between this type of mandate and the car insurance mandate, but consider this:  how many times per year do you submit a claim to your car insurance?  Do you submit a claim whenever you get the oil changed?  The tires replaced?  The windshield wiper fluid topped off?  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that insurance pay for these things.  I am suggesting that health insurance should not pay for doctor visits, small procedures and most medications.  This would significantly reduce costs and most people would be able to afford a doctor visit without needing insurance.  Health insurance would be limited in use for “big ticket” items like surgery, cancer treatments and novel therapeutics and drugs, much in the same way that car insurance is limited to major repairs like substantial body damage or blue book value whenever a car is considered “totaled.”  There’s a death panel joke in there somewhere…

At any rate, liberals can moan and gnash their teeth and complain that “big insurance” is the only winner in this situation, but is that actually the case?  The only entity that stands to gain power – and money – is the government. Who’da thunk?