So I was looking through some articles and I came across this gem that made me double angry:
Top Senate Democrats intend to try to strip the health insurance industry of its exemption from federal antitrust laws, according to congressional officials, the latest evidence of a deepening struggle over President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul the health care industry.
If enacted, the switch would mean greater federal regulation for an industry that recently has stepped up its criticism of portions of a health care bill moving toward the Senate floor.
There two things that really got to me from reading the above section.
First of all, the obvious government encroachment on the health insurance industry and how they just keep on tightening their grip around it. Between the state mandates, the fact that you cannot buy health insurance in another state, and the ever increasing amount of welfare dollars pumped into it, the health insurance industry is already over-regulated. It is expensive and difficult to pay for precisely because of the government, not in spite of them.
If all the government rules and regulations were done away with on health insurance right now, I guarantee you that by this time next year, that so-called 46 million who are uninsured (or was it 35 million?) will be cut down to one-tenth of what it was. This is because, in spite of what you may think, health insurance companies actually want you to buy their product. If they could make it cheaper and more affordable, they would. You think they keep so expensive because they are greedy? Any good businessperson could tell you that greed does not pay off in the long run. For any business to stay viable, they have to offer their product or service at a price that everyone can afford.
Come to think of it, do you ever see a health insurance company make a commercial that advertises their low cost? Unlike car or life insurance commercials, they cannot do it effectively because they know they have to rip off their customers due to the government mandated services they have to provide. And all those costs are passed on to you and me.
With the welfare side of things, it just adds a government monopoly to whatever group they decided to cover. Have you ever seen a cheap health insurance plan for the elderly, besides Medicare? I asked my grandparents and they said they have not. The mere fact that they looked should be a good indicator of how great Medicare is.
The second thing that got me angry is the fact that the government gets to pick and choose which industries fall under antitrust laws and which ones do not. For those of you who do not know what antitrust laws are, they are laws designed to prevent monopolies within the marketplace. At least, that is what their original intention was. How they are used now is anyone’s guess, considering they have been around for over a century now. The last big antitrust case was against Microsoft and they managed to get past that one. I heard that there was a nasty one with some energy company back in the 1950s where the defendants were pretty much screwed, whether they did anything or not.
Anyway, antitrust laws are based on a faulty premise, that is that a monopoly that is not backed by the force of the government will be oppressive to the consumer. This is patently untrue because any company or organization who becomes a monopoly will still be beholden to the market forces lest a smaller competitor comes in and steals their thunder. Only when the government backs them up do they thrive. I will say that Microsoft had a tendency to sue their competitors out of existence, which essentially amounts to a government monopoly.
But the mere fact that the antitrust laws do not apply to every industry makes me worry. What it tells me, and what gets me really angry over it, is that these esteemed, grade-A buttholes in Congress are doing all this to curry favor with various companies in order to keep the antitrust lawsuits at bay from them. It is essentially an extortion racket. If the members of Congress were private citizens, they would still be in prison. The only reason they are not is because they write the rules that determine legality.
So there you have it. Congress gets to continually extort and shakedown private companies so long as they keep certain regulations at bay. They are using their power for money and even more power and they are doing in plain sight. The media does not look at all this and say, “Boy, that’s messed up.” Instead they report on it like it is business as usual.
it is just all maddening to me.