Image credit: North Country Public Radio
Sorry, I have been
off the air for a couple of weeks, and when I got back online this weekend, I
found a column by Ann Coulter on HER solution to the healthcare repeal-replace
dilemma. Here’s are several extracts and the whole thing (from a little over a week ago)
is here.
It’s always impossible to repeal laws that require Ann to pay for
greedy people, because the greedy run out on the streets wailing that the
Republicans are murdering them.
Obamacare is uniquely awful because the free stuff isn’t paid for
through income taxes: It’s paid for through MY health insurance premiums. This
is unfortunate because I wanted to buy health insurance.
Perhaps you’re not aware — SINCE YOU EXEMPTED YOURSELVES FROM
OBAMACARE, CONGRESS — but buying or selling health insurance is illegal in
America.
Right now, there’s no free market because insurance is insanely
regulated not only by Obamacare, but also by the most corrupt organizations in
America: state insurance commissions. (I’m talking to you, New York!)
Federal and state laws make it illegal to sell health insurance
that doesn’t cover a laughable array of supposedly vital services based on
bureaucrats’ medical opinions of which providers have the best lobbyists.
As a result, it’s illegal to sell health insurance that covers any
of the medical problems I’d like to insure against. Why can’t the GOP keep
Obamacare for the greedy — but make it legal for Ann to buy health insurance?
This is how it works today:
ME: I’m
perfectly healthy, but I’d like to buy health insurance for heart disease,
broken bones, cancer, and everything else that a normal person would ever need,
but no more.
INSURANCE COMPANY: That
will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take
it, and you have to pay for doctor’s visits yourself. But your plan covers
shrinks, infertility treatments, sex
change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment, drug rehab and
67 other things you will never need.
INSURANCE COMPANY UNDER ANN’S PLAN: That will be $50 a month, the
deductible is $1,000, you can see any doctor you’d like, and you have full
coverage for any important medical problems you could conceivably have in a
million years.
Mine is a two-step plan (and you don’t have to do the second step,
so it’s really a one-step plan).
STEP 1: Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare! Instead, Congress
passes a law, pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate
commerce, that says: “In America, it shall be legal to sell health insurance on
the free market. This law supersedes all other laws, taxes, mandates, coverage
requirements, regulations or prohibitions, state or federal.”
The end. Love, Ann.
There will be no whining single mothers storming Congress with
their pre-printed placards. People who want to stay on Obamacare can. No one is
taking away anything. They can still have health insurance with free pony
rides. It just won’t be paid for with Ann’s premiums anymore, because Ann will
now be allowed to buy health insurance on the free market.
Americans will be free to choose among a variety of health
insurance plans offered by willing sellers, competing with one another to
provide the best plans at the lowest price. A nationwide market in health
insurance will drive down costs and improve access — just like everything else
we buy here in America!
Within a year, most
Americans will be buying health insurance on the free market (and half of the
rest will be illegal aliens). We’ll have TV ads with cute little
geckos hawking amazing plans and young couples bragging about their broad
coverage and great prices from this or that insurance company.
The Obamacare plans will
still have the “essential benefits” (free pony rides) that are so important to
NPR’s Mara Liasson, but the free market plans will have
whatever plans consumers agree to buy and insurance companies agree to sell —
again, just like every other product we buy here in America.
. . .
Until the welfare program
is decoupled from the insurance market, nothing will work. Otherwise, it’s like forcing grocery
stores to pay for everyone to have a house. A carton of milk would suddenly
cost $10,000.
. . .
STEP 2: Next year, Congress formulates a better way of delivering
health care to the welfare cases, which will be much easier since there will be
a LOT fewer of them.
No actual money-making
business is going to survive by taking the welfare cases — the ones that will
cover illegal aliens and
Mara Liasson’s talk therapy — so the greedy will get government plans.
But by then, only a minority of Americans will be on the “free”
plans. (Incidentally, this will be a huge money-saver — if anyone cares about
the federal budget.) Eighty percent of Americans will already have good health
plans sold to them by insurance companies competing for their business.
With cheap plans available, a lot of the greedy will go ahead and
buy a free market plan. Who wants to stand in line at the DMV to see a doctor
when your neighbors have great health care plans for $50 a month?
. . .
#
# #
