New Jersey offers an unequivocal demonstration of the regressive, cancerous tendencies inherent in the regulatory welfare state.
With insurance companies in New Jersey fleeing the health exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill to create a government-operated plan that he said will stabilize the volatile market.
The "New Jersey Public Option Health Care Act" would require the state Health and Banking and Insurance departments to develop the plans, according to the legislation Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer) introduced on Thursday and announced on Monday.
Any consumer could enroll in the plans, which would compete with those offered by private carriers, according to the bill (A4211).
"Health care should be a right for every New Jersey resident," said Gusciora (D–Mercer). "I think the climate is finally right to make significant changes to our system that will enshrine that principle in our laws."
"The government has the benefit of representing a large population of people, and that gives them a lot of clout in cost and reimbursement negotiations," Gusciora said.
I left these comments, taking the above statements in turn.
With insurance companies in New Jersey fleeing the health exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill to create a government-operated plan that he said will stabilize the volatile market.
This is classic statism.
First, the politicians cripple an industry with regulations, making it impossible for private companies to deliver their services. Then, these same politicians ride to the “rescue” with another coercive government program—another small step on the road to the progressive government takeover of healthcare.
Such is the method of these statist scoundrels. Such is the process by which the American people are succumbing to the creeping loss of their personal freedom to “big government.” Instead of demanding a repeal of the government policies that are causing insurers to “flee the health exchange created by the Affordable Care Act,” too many Americans are as clueless as the population of Animal Farm that succumbed to the devious power-grab of the pig leadership.
Any consumer could enroll in the plans, which would compete with those offered by private carriers, according to the bill (A4211).
To believe the very idea that there can be “competition” among parties in which one “competitor has access to taxpayer funding while holding a gun to the heads of its supposed competitors, in the form of legal regulatory powers, is astoundingly naive. Market competition implies voluntary consent, agreement, and exchange on a level legal playing field. The very fact that the government, which is responsible for forcing so many companies off of the field, will now become a “competitor” is corruption more properly understood as legal organized crime rather than market competition.
"Health care should be a right for every New Jersey resident," said Gusciora (D–Mercer). "I think the climate is finally right to make significant changes to our system that will enshrine that principle in our laws."
To believe that there can be a “right to healthcare” is to believe in slavery. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action to pursue personal goals, not an automatic claim on goods and services that others must be forced to provide. While slavery manifests in varying degrees of brutality, the idea of a right to material values other than what one has properly earned by his own effort in voluntary trade with others must by definition mean involuntary servitude for those forced to provide it—and a government that increasingly controls the economy on the way to a totalitarian state.
"The government has the benefit of representing a large population of people, and that gives them a lot of clout in cost and reimbursement negotiations," Gusciora said.
The term “negotiation” implies voluntary give and take, resulting to a voluntary agreement—or not. But when the government uses its lawmaking powers—the power of the gun—to “represent a large population of people,” it is essentially seizing a monopsony economic power. To claim that “negotiations” are possible between private economic parties and coercive government monopsony is another distortion of the language. If the government seizes a monopsony in some field, it can essentially impose its demands by arbitrary fiat, because its negotiating “partner” must either succumb to the government’s demands—the “clout” of the gun—or get out of the business (or at least abandon the part of the consumer market for which the government has seized a representative role). Some “negotiation!”
Regulatory tyranny. Individual rights denial. Language distortion. Such is the means by which statism begets statism.
Related Reading:
The Free Market Doesn’t ‘Do’: It Liberates You to Do
