James Capretta and Lanhee Chen of American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, respectively, have a piece in a recent Wall Street Journal edition that talks about how to “nudge” uninsured Americans into getting health coverage plans. It’s impressive in its…foolishness…(I’m being polite).
Congress can help these Americans and many others get insurance by enrolling them in no-premium, no-obligation plans from which they could withdraw if they wanted to.
No. Not only no, Hell no. No squared. We’ve enough Big Government intruding into our private lives, arrogantly presuming to make our private decisions for us, without adding this to the steaming pile.
But how to make sure people stay covered?
None of your business, and none of Big Government’s. This is an individual’s choice whether to stay. Or even to get a plan in the first place. Full stop.
But their [Republicans’] plan also must make sure most Americans have health insurance.
No it mustn’t. It need only ensure Americans (all, not just your “most”) have access to insurance. That access will come most broadly from a free market in which actual insurance policies are sold (not the currently available welfare coverage plans that Big Government is trying to force on us in ever diminishing variety and ever increasing cost). The decision to buy—the decision to participate at all—can only be the individual’s in a free nation.
And: keep your hands out of my pockets looking for money with which to pay for your “no-premium, no-obligation” schemes. Of course you—and every American with two neurons to bump against each other to form a ganglion—know that your schemes won’t be free or without obligation: someone is going to pay for that stuff.
Talk about false premises. Jeez.
Finally: when did these two AEI and Hoover Institution denizens join the Progressive-Democratic Party?
It need only ensure Americans (all, not just your “most”) have access to insurance.
I disagree even with this. The government role should be limited to ensuring there is a capability to make a market (the participants may or may not desire to have one) for health care. How much to consume and how people pay for that is the individual choice. It may involve insurance, as a means to assuage concerns regarding financial impacts of unlikely events. It need not.
That would be having access. There’s no requirement to participate, only the ability, and that can come only from a free market.
Some participants may not desire to have one; they do not get to prevent the rest from having one; the having carries within it no requirement to participate. The participating also is an individual choice, which those who do not want such a market may not deny the others.
Since liberty requires a free market to exist, government’s obligation is to create and maintain the environment within which free markets can exist; this creates along the way access for all to participate.
Eric Hines