“I want a health insurance system that works as well for the American people as it does for the insurance industry. They should be free to make a profit, but they also have to be fair, they also have to be accountable. That’s what we’re talking about, security and stability for folks who have health insurance, help for those who don’t.” Barack Obama 9/7/09
It’s obvious here, to any person that doesn’t get goosebumps when they hear Barack Obama’s voice that the insurance companies are on our President’s hit list. When someone a politician has been demonizing a particular industry so brazenly for so long attempts such an obviously half-hearted endorsement of the need of corporations to make a profit–well it’s like the dreaded “vote of confidence” a football GM might give an unpopular head coach. It’s just like Obama’s view on building coal power plants. The insurance businesses can keep selling insurance, they just have to figure out how to make a profit under rules that totally destroy their ability to make a profit.
Clearly, Obama’s plans for health insurance will make it impossible for health insurance companies to stay in business. Which is precisely the reason he wants to legislate that health insurance must be “affordable” to everyone. The concept of affordability is so nebulous and plastic, it provides an almost unlimited range for new government regulation. And the idea that government can regulate anything to make it more affordable is beyond absurd. But it points to a clear strategy that democrats have been pushing lately. Democrats–who hold the free market in contempt–establish onerous regulations and pervert market conditions to favor socialist organizations like labor unions, then blame capitalism and greed (a pejorative code word for rational self interest) for the failure. It is the template that has been tried on every “third way” program that liberals have proposed. When the system fails, it is a demonstration that capitalism doesn’t work. As if socialism could ever work. If socialist programs were judged on the same grounds that a free market company is judged, no one could defend socialism. But if one company fails to succeed in the free market, it is an indictment of the whole system. And government regulation and interference is never considered causal.
Instead, legislation is crafted to pander to populist concerns with corporations, “protecting” consumers and demonizing the profit motive. It is organizations that are continually being held responsible for consumer safety, not the consumers themselves. It is government’s responsibility to protect individual from themselves. In fact, there are few limits to the responsibility of government. Anywhere the individual’s responsibility ends, government’s responsibility begins. And an individual’s responsibility begins wherever they say it does. This is the populist heart of the Democrat party. The individual cannot take responsibility for something which has has been ceded to organizational responsibility.
