Legally Prescribed Welfare System
Hopes have been shot to hell of ever being able to afford regular health insurance, health reforms will never fix the mess the government has created.
“Likewise, requiring insurers to cover a wide range of conditions against which some subscribers do not wish to insure – indeed, against certain contingencies that cannot apply to them in any event (e.g., costs associated with pregnancy for male subscribers) – turns the insurance system into a complex system of overcharges and cross-subsidies, that is, turns the system into a legally prescribed welfare system rather than an insurance system.
Stop Calling It ‘Insurance’
Legislators will be reluctant to buck continued subsidies and privileges no matter how irrational these interventionist distortions are.
The federal government and the state governments have intervened haphazardly in the health-care insurance business so pervasively and for so long that by now the whole setup is nothing but a gigantic mess that flies in the face of the insurance principle and dictates a host of requirements that make no sense except as answers to the prayers of special-interest groups and rent seekers.
Once a net benefit has been created, however, each beneficiary group will scream to the heavens if reforms should threaten to remove its privilege, and legislators will be reluctant to buck such organized political insistence on continued subsidies and privileges no matter how irrational these interventionist distortions are as components of an insurance system.” here.…via Maggies Farm
