As I said on February 11, there was an easy solution for the Obama administration if they really thought providing free contraception services is critical to women’s health: Have the government provide it. If it would be too expensive to provide free contraception services to all women, how about “birth control stamps” for those who can’t otherwise afford it? Obviously, some Catholics (and other people) would oppose the government doing this, but at least we wouldn’t be forcing them, either directly or indirectly through the sham of some insurance company providing it for “free,” to pay for it, other than as part of their general taxes.
Some might argue that such a program would not pass Congress, but if that is true, why should the executive branch institute such a policy all by itself? Which is, actually, one of the problems with Obamacare: No choice. For an administration that is all about choice when it comes to having babies or alternative lifestyles, the Obama administration sure doesn’t want to let people choose when it comes to healthcare and health insurance. In fact, you have to wonder if that isn’t at least one of the reasons for the unpopularity of Obamacare.
I certainly understand the very big concern about the constitutionality of a law forcing people to buy a product from a private company or be fined by the government. I understand why some people feel, as has been argued, that if the federal government can force you to buy health insurance, what is there the government can’t force you to buy – or do?
But there is also a concern about the limited choices there will be with respect to the insurance people have to buy. While the private health insurance market is not all that developed today, because so many people get health insurance where they work, there are still lots of choices. You can buy plans that provide full coverage for all kinds of illnesses and conditions. You can include dental coverage if you want; or exclude it if you want. You can have your health insurance cover some drugs, all drugs, or no drugs at all. You can even buy a policy that provides just only catastrophic coverage. You pay, for example, the first $5,000 of medical expenses in a year, and the insurance company pays all the rest. The insurance is fairly inexpensive, and if all you need is coverage for a major problem, it could be exactly what you want.
But when President Obama’s healthcare “exchanges” come into existence in 2014, people aren’t going to have those kinds of choices. There may be more than one company offering policies, but the policies are going to be pretty much all the same. They are going to cover everything – and more – and they are going to be very expensive. And people are going to have to buy them even if they don’t want that much coverage.
Because the Obama administration doesn’t want to let people choose. In some ways it’s like the Democrats who don’t like vouchers and other programs that let parents choose what school their children go to. They don’t think parents are smart enough to know what school is best for their children. Experts need to make the decisions, not parents.
And so it is with the health insurance people will have to buy. Liberals think they know what kind of health insurance people should have – and liberals are going to make them buy it, whether they want it or not. It reminds me of a conversation we had with a young couple in East Germany in 1982. We told them that, in the United States, people could decide whether or not they wanted to buy health insurance for themselves. The woman noted that in East Germany one did not have such decisions to make. She said that the government made those decisions for people so they did not need to worry about making mistakes.
Which is the way it seems to be moving in the United States – and the way it will continue to move if Barack Obama is re-elected in November. The government in Washington will decide things for us. Because they are (or, they think they are) the experts, and they know better than we do what is good for us. And they will decide for us – so we do not need to worry about making mistakes.
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