Monday, January 7, 2013

Mandates, Regulation and ‘Rights’

Health Insurers Raise Some Rates by Double Digits - New York Times

What was causing the problem to which ObamaCare was supposed to be the solution? If it was not clear before, it is becoming more so, now that the alleged solution is making the problem worse - The Other McCain

Government policies were causing the artificial scarcity of “affordable health care” (a glittering generality) and the new policies known as ObamaCare are aggravating the problem because they are, in effect, just more of the same. We had a lot more “affordable health care” before government decided that health care should be “free” (i.e., subsidized by taxpayers) for some patients, and then states began to mandate and regulate how employers and health-insurance companies should provide coverage to those paying their own premiums....

The free-market system is distorted and artificial scarcity is caused by what amount to government efforts to control prices. Dressed up in the language of “rights” and “fairness,” and promising to rid us of our woes, liberalism’s solutions inevitably create new problems.

Have you noticed that good intentions are becoming increasingly scarce? It’s a supply-and-demand problem, because liberals have lately been so incredibly busy paving the road to hell....