Competition Obama Style

The buzz word for the Obama health care plan seems to be competition. He used this word in his press conference this week in regards to reducing costs. As I understand it the competition between private and public health care providers will work to reduce costs and make health care insurance more affordable.

First of all when he uses the word competition in this way Adam Smith and Milton Freidman must be rolling over in their graves. Competition infers a battle of some sort. Sports teams and players compete. GM competes against Toyota and the other auto companies (at least they did until they became Obama Motors). Dell competes against the other computer manufacturers. The common thread is that none of these companies or teams gets to make the rules. They all follow the same rules whether they be an actual rule book as in sports or a set of laws set down by government in the arena of business.

Now the government decides they want to play. Already we have Congressmen and Senators calling up CEO's 'advising them' why the dealerships in their district should not be closed and maybe some other dealership may work out better in the long run (surprise surprise Barney Frank). So now the government wants to go up against the big insurance companies. Part of me says they all deserve each other. It sickens me to defend the principles of free markets with the likes of Medical Mutual, Anthem and the rest of them. They are however privately held firms and therefore cannot print money to attract customers. They cannot write laws to make their own stake more attractive. They cannot lead around a gaggle of sycophantic reporters around to make their pitch. These firms have to pay for advertising, they can't just call up ABC news and ask for an hour infomercial.

Calling this setup competition is vile. It shows how depraved the people are that misuse the language in this way are. Who do we have to blame for this mess? I have to put the blame on the Republican Congress who spent the eight years before 2006 spreading pork and selling influence which brought on the band of miscreants we have running things now.

Make no mistake about this. If this health care scheme passes health care will be entirely in the public domain in short order. This is entirely the plan, of Obama and Polosi and Reid. As government gets deeper into health they will lower the price of their plan. This does not reduce costs it only reduces price. Since the private firms will not be able to match this price they will lose subscribers until the costs will be divided up into a smaller and smaller pool of people. This will necessarily cause their prices to go up and up. They will eventually leave the health care market altogether and put their capitol into markets where they can compete. This will of course leave the health care market to the government and they can boast that they won it through 'fair competition'. It makes me sick!

The dirty little secret is that the government and especially President Obama have us convinced that if we don't pass his plan we are choosing to do nothing. There are other alternatives. Private sector changes will work. One way or another we need to take insurance out of the hands of employers. Please see the Heritage Foundation for ideas of private sector health care. We can increase actual competition by opening up health insurance to the entire nation not just within the state as it is now. Auto insurance competes nationwide. Why can't health care insurance? For auto insurance we pay for nearly everything with our cars and use insurance for the big costs such as accident, collision and theft. While we can't use the same model with a national market for insurance there can be differing levels of insurance. If you want just a catastrophic plan for a lower premium that will be available. If you need more things covered at a higher price that will be there too. You really should be able to set your price depending on what you want covered. More young people would carry insurance in that scenario. They are one of the largest groups of the uninsured now. They don't see it as worth their limited resources to pay for insurance that covers everything when they rarely use it. Let them cover only the big things. That can't happen when the employer is offering a one size fits all policy.

We cannot let this plan pass. We will delegate our liberty to the Democrats. With this group we will be a banana republic soon. We will soon see the disasters that Canada, Britain and the other socialized nations see now. Only narcissism makes this crowd think that what failed everywhere else will work here. Narcissism is the one thing that won't be in short supply when they take over.