Proponents of the idea say that the tangle of state regulation drives up costs, particularly in states with heavy mandates, and that a quick and easy way to reduce prices would be to allow people in states where insurance is expensive, like New York or Massachusetts, to buy policies in low-cost states like Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Mr. Shadegg, who sponsored legislation to allow insurance sales across state lines in 2005 and has championed the idea ever since, likes to illustrate the lack of competition by pointing to how different the market is for automobile insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you turn on the television station at night,\u201d he said, \u201cyou see Allstate and Geico and Progressive and State Farm pounding each other\u2019s heads in. \u2018Drop your policy and come get a policy from us, and we\u2019ll do two things \u2014 we\u2019ll save you money and give you better service.\u2019 You never see that kind of advertisement for you and I to go out and buy health insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Mr. Shadegg adamantly opposes the Democrats\u2019 take on the idea. He dislikes their requirement that states pass laws to create health care \u201ccompacts,\u201d and he rejects the Democrats\u2019 efforts to impose tight new federal regulations on insurers. Replacing many knots of state rules with a big knot of federal rules would defeat the purpose, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Democrats: “But if you allow people to choose their own insurance, some of them will choose insurance that costs less<\/em> and has fewer regulations<\/em>!”.<\/p>\nNo, really:<\/p>\n
President Obama and leading Democrats, however, warn that without new regulations, private insurance companies would race to set up shop in states with lax regulation, minimal benefits requirements and the fewest consumer protections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The nerve <\/em>of those peasants – picking out the insurance they need and can afford, rather than insurance that’s larded up with all sorts of costly mandated coverage that just might not apply to them<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u201cIf you go to full interstate shopping, you are going to need some consumer protection,\u201d said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, a supporter of the idea. Still, Mr. Wyden said he believed that compromise with Republicans is possible. \u201cThere is a lot to work with here,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In addition to bringing better, less expensive <\/em>insurance to more people (even left-leaning “All Things Considered” noted that while Minnesotans might not see much benefit because our insurance is already relatively cheap, over half of the people in New York and New Jersey could find better insurance cheaper under this plan.<\/p>\nPresuming they can do with fewer benefits and less regulation, anyway…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“An area in the Healthcare debate where Republicans and Democrats agree!”, NPR’s “Marketplace Money” trumpeted last night. “Only in the most trivial possible way, I’m gonna guess“, I thought, turning the radio up. Am I ever wrong about these things? Naturally, the Democrats favor a form of “competition” that has all the “competition” regulated out; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,68,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8695"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8705,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions\/8705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}