California to Force People to Buy Health Insurance

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)


California is proposing to follow Massachusetts in the use of force to make citizens of California buy insurance, even if they don't want to. The usual mantra is to protect the children.

According to the AP story on Jan 8, 2006, California Governor Schwarzenegger will demand all businesses with over 10 employees provide health insurance for their employees. Some employers will layoff workers to have 10 or less employees. A few years later you can bet the requirement will be lowered to a 5 employees, and soon after all employees must be provided with health insurance. The insurance industry must be celebrating. They are soon to receive 6.5 million new customers.

The report said there are 6.5 million Californians without health insurance. Of those, only 1.5 million are too poor to buy health insurance. The government is going to make everyone buy health insurance, and tax business 4%. They call the tax a "contribution". To call it a contribution is a lie. No business can refuse to pay the tax. The poor people who cannot afford to pay will have insurance provided by others. Why should anyone work if housing, food, and health care is provided by someone else? The group thinking that the group is responsible for health care means no individual is responsible. This group thinking has retarded the progress of groups throughout history.

This is a major victory for the insurance companies. They can reduce their sales staff. Everyone is forced to be a customer to the insurance companies.

Many people do not buy insurance because the premiums and out of pocket deductibles do not justify the coverage. Many people, like my neighbor, would rather be self insured. Now they will lose that freedom. Governments always take away freedoms.

What will the new insurance cover? Now that everyone must buy insurance, the insurance industry will try very hard to control what is covered. This will cause a need for more government controls. Eventually the government will decide what must be covered.

Health care has become community property. Community property is never as efficient as private property. Compare a public park to a private park. Private property of the same socio economic level is better cared for than community property. Communism has never, never improved a society. Communism has always retarded the progress of a society. Communism is a tragedy.

Garrett Hardin wrote an essay about the Tragedy of the Commons. Hardin says that people who own common property will always try to get more from the property than they put in.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyoftheCommons.html
In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the "tragedy of the commons" in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch, 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.

The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property, subdivided into five portions. Each year the owners moved their animals to a new section. Fallow periods of four years gave the pastures time to recover from the grazing. They did so because the owners had an incentive to take care of their land. But outside the ranch, no one owned the land. It was open to nomads and their herds. Though knowing nothing of Karl Marx, the herdsmen followed his famous advice of 1875: "... to each according to his needs." Their needs were uncontrolled and grew with the increase in the number of animals. But supply was governed by nature, decreasing drastically during the drought of the early seventies. The herds exceeded the natural "carrying capacity" of their environment, soil was compacted and eroded, and "weedy" plants, unfit for cattle consumption, replaced good plants. Many cattle died, and so did humans.

The government will eventually decide the rich should pay higher premiums than the rest for the same coverage.

The insurance industry will become a government regulated industry that benefits the industry and not the free market.

Governor Schwarzenegger said his plan will save the State 10 billion dollars. How about saving the citizens' money! The State will not save ten billion dollars. It will spend the ten billion on something else.

Stephen Moore, an anti health plan speaker said on CNBC, "People in California will leave if this California health plan is implemented". A proponent of Universal Health, former Labor Secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich said, "This is why we need the Federal Government to provide Universal health care, to keep people from leaving those states that implement health care plans." This is the thinking of big government central planners. They do not want people to have choices and vote with their feet by going to a more efficient state. Imagine the knowledge gained if all fifty states were allowed to implement, or not, health care plans, or minimum wages. We would see which government works best and citizens would be free to choose that government they liked.

As governments take away our freedoms, why do more and more people worship at the Church of Big Government? Government only operates by using force and aggression, even when it pretends to do good.

Bilbo Baggins