Politicized health insurance
Posted on | September 15, 2009 | Comments Off by Aschwin de Wolf
Heather Mac Donald draws attention to the gradual transformation of private health insurers to highly regulated providers of entitlements:
Democrats (and some Republicans) regularly bash health insurance companies for not covering preexisting conditions. But isn’t that like expecting a home insurance company to write a policy for fire after your house has already burned down? Health insurance seems to have become something other than real insurance—no longer a bet by both parties on an uncertain future catastrophe but simply a means for paying for a service that the insured is guaranteed to use.
This development highlights that socialized health care does not necessarily require a public option. Health care becomes public as a consequence of ever-increasing regulation that blurs the distinction between private and public.
It is doubtful whether critics of socialized health care can make a persuasive case against this trend without challenging the major motivation of its advocates; the conviction that health care is a “right.”
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