Believe it or not, there is something the left doesn't like about ObamaCare, and I'm not just talking about the disastrous web site. The left hates the fact that ObamaCare relies on private insurers, since we all know that they would prefer is for the government to run the hospitals, employ the doctors, pay the bills, etc.
But that doesn't mean the right should see the involvement of private insurers as a silver lining. It is not. Indeed, health insurance has been the abiding problem with American health care since World War II - a problem created entirely by government policy, and doubled-down on by ObamaCare, which took all the problems created by the mingling of health care and insurance and put them on steriods.
During the development of the mostrosity that ultimately became ObamaCare, Democrats sought and received plenty of input from the health insurance industry. The result was a law that requires you to buy their products, and subsidizes your costs so you can do so. That's a win for the health insurance industry any way you look at it. It is the latest step in the government-driven transformation of health insurance from a hedge against risk to a quasi-public arm of the welfare state.
Remember, health insurance is really not insurance at all. Insurance protects you against a catastrophe that may or may not ever happen, but that you could not afford to pay for if it did. Your house burns down. Your car is totalled. Your basement is flooded. A tree falls and crashes through your roof. You buy policies against these unlikely but not-impossible events in the hope that you will never have to file a claim.
Health insurance could work like that. It could insure you against catastrophic costs brought on by a very serious situation, while leaving the normal everyday costs of basic health maintenance to you. That is how health insurance should work.
But it does not. During World War II, the federal government froze wages and prices, but used tax incentives to encourage employers to offer health insurance as a benefit so it could offer something to entice workers. Since then, competition for employees drove the cushy nature of health insurance to includes lots of things beyond traditional insurance, even to the point where people don't expect to pay more than $10 for a visit to the doctor. The population became programmed to expect it could access any and all health care services with little or no money out of pocket.
As consumers became desensitized to the real cost of health care services, those costs soared - but consumers didn't feel it, at least not directly. Employers felt it, though. The cost of insurance premiums rose precipitously, and that made it increasingly more expensive for American businesses to hire people. If you didn't have the opportunity to get health insurance through an employer, the cost was prohibitive to you, as was the cost of paying out of pocket.
Government caused all of this. Health insurers were raking in big bucks just to pay other people's bills, which were bloated in part because someone had to pay the costs of the insurers to pay the bills. Kind of a vicious cycle.
So why wouldn't the insurers play ball with the Democrats in the development of ObamaCare? Government policy created them in the first place. If government policy was going to mandate more people buy their product, why not keep riding that train?
Remember this: You do not need their product, and for most people it is a poor value. You only have it because government policy has made it prohibitively expensive to pay for health care in more rational ways. Just because they are part of the private sector does not mean they should be viewed as heroes to conservatives, nor does it mean their role in all this is any sort of silver linings. They sold out to big government long ago, and ObamaCare is the best thing that ever happened to them.
