{"id":90,"date":"2009-09-07T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T02:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2009-09-09T10:44:23","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T14:44:23","slug":"let-the-health-insurance-companies-answer-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/07\/let-the-health-insurance-companies-answer-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Let the health insurance companies answer to us"},"content":{"rendered":"

I attended a fascinating and boisterous town hall meeting<\/a> last Wednesday night, run by Democratic congressman John Hall.\u00a0\u00a0 I give him credit for holding the event, albeit one announced with almost no advanced notice.\u00a0\u00a0 Word got out anyway, and the auditorium was truly SRO (even the aisles were filled with sitting attendees).<\/p>\n

This meeting was much like the many other reported meetings from around the country, with emotions running high on all parts of the ideological continuum.\u00a0\u00a0 To be clear, the tone in the room was clearly stacked against a government takeover of health care and insurance.\u00a0 I’ve personally never witnessed anything like this — thinly veiled anger at the potential power-grab of government in a way not seen for generations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was the democratic process in its purest form:\u00a0 live, raw and messy.<\/p>\n

But it struck me that one common theme was this:\u00a0 health insurance companies are the villain to almost everyone.\u00a0\u00a0 Rep. Hall, who would ideally see a single-payer system, wondered aloud about why the insurance companies have not already “fixed the problems”, and because of that, declared that dramatic government action was needed instead. \u00a0 It was a brilliant demonstration of just how misunderstood the current market for health insurance is, namely that there is almost no market at all.\u00a0\u00a0 Everything insurance companies do, right down to which ones will sell a product in a state, is heavily regulated by government.<\/p>\n

So I left the meeting with the following thought:\u00a0\u00a0 Why not direct all the collective anger at the insurance companies back at them directly, by in a sense, throwing them to the lions of each other?\u00a0\u00a0 Remove all barriers to their free and total competition.\u00a0\u00a0 Let them sell any product they want, to whoever they want, at any price, anywhere in the world.\u00a0\u00a0 Let them beat each other up in the public arena, and may the best companies win.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Note that the companies that make the most people the happiest will do very well, and the ones that do not will go bankrupt.\u00a0\u00a0 However, with no governmental crutch, it will be individuals who decide <\/strong>what makes them happiest, whether that’s a particular kind of coverage, a particular cost structure, lifetime payment ceilings or whatever.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If at any time a company is found to be making “obscene profits”, it will attract the attention of others who will seek to steal customers by offering an equivalent product at a lower price.\u00a0\u00a0 In this way, health insurance inflation will be kept in check by market forces, as dictated by us, not government.<\/p>\n

This is how nearly every other sector of our economy works.\u00a0 The people dictate to companies what products they will buy and at what price.\u00a0 They tell their friends about good products and service providers.\u00a0\u00a0 And they steer their friends away from bad ones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It works well, and can work for health insurance, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended a fascinating and boisterous town hall meeting last Wednesday night, run by Democratic congressman John Hall.\u00a0\u00a0 I give him credit for holding the event, albeit one announced with almost no advanced notice.\u00a0\u00a0 Word got out anyway, and the auditorium was truly SRO (even the aisles were filled with sitting attendees). This meeting was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}