Fighting Big Government in Washington

Guest Post by Doctor Snedley, Personal Assistant to Doctor Biobrain

From the AP:
A bill to give small businesses a cheaper option when providing health insurance stalled in the Senate on Thursday.  Under the proposal endorsed by (image placeholder)resident Bush, businesses could buy insurance through regional or national trade associations. The insurance would be free of many state mandates. That could make it a cheaper alternative for businesses and for workers who have no insurance and would want to buy even scaled-back coverage.

Insurers being free of the byzantine maze of dangerous state mandates??  Needless to say, Democrats, having run the idea-pump dry nearly fifty years ago, awake from their drunken stupor to once again wield the obstructionist card.  After all, it’s the only one they’ve got.  And so they bring the Senate to a screeching halt.  And why?  Because their comrades on the state-level realized that the jig was almost up and the political gravytrain is running on empty.  It was time to pay the piper; and thanks to brave souls like President Bush, he’ll be paid by Joe Taxpayer no longer.

One Republican, Sen. Enzi from Wyoming rightly points out that employers wouldn’t cut benefits for workers who already have insurance.  Of course not.  I myself have had business-paid health insurance that kept getting reduced every few years, as expenses increased.  But I’m sure that wouldn’t happen this time.  Of course not.  No employer would take advantage of these cheapy insurance plans to save cash.  That’s just not what this is about.  And Enzi should know, as I’m sure enough insurance lobbyists were paid some big bucks to tell him that.  The fine Senator from Wyoming is no doubt an expert on the subject by now.

As the Senator explains:
"What they're trying to nail you on is that this bill eliminates mandates. Well it doesn't really, because every association is going to make sure your employees have the things that they need for their health care," Enzi said when talking to small business owners on Thursday.

The real savings from the health plans, Enzi said, would come from allowing companies to band together when buying insurance, which lowers administrative costs and gives them more clout when negotiating rates.

That’s right.  Who needs stinking state mandates, when we all know that our employers always have our best interests at heart?  The only reason we even have these stupid state laws is because of bureaucratic turf-wars by state-level goombahs who just like to poke their noses in places that they clearly don’t belong.  Like health insurance, and environmental regulations, and all kinds of other fantasy issues that the loonie left like to pretend are so damn important.  And yet if this stuff is so important, why haven’t they done anything about it?  Why haven’t they fixed it yet?  Sure, they could be passing laws to help people; but I guess it’s just a lot easier to whine about what Republicans are doing to help the average businessman, then to fix imagined problems that don’t exist.  Typical.

And heck, had the states not been so uppity with all their Big Government hoo-haw; insurers would have been happy to do all these things and more.   This wasn’t about ripping off the regular Joe or allowing insurers to deny needed cancer tests because they’re expensive and hurt short-term profits.  That’d be political suicide.  This is about telling those damn dirty states where they can stick their stupid regulations.  And I’m sure once the Republicans have firmly eliminated all these trouble spots, insurers will immediately institute even better provisions.  Nobody likes a bully; especially not our nation’s insurers.  That’s why it’s necessary for our federal government to step-in and show these little state so-and-so’s who’s boss.  To protect the little guy.

Besides, as Senator Enzi says, the real savings are from the group discounts.  That’s why it’s so necessary to remove the state mandates; as a symbolic gesture showing how important group discounts are.  Sure, that seems to be the whole deal-breaking aspect of all this; but that’s all just hogwash and baloney by people who don’t have the commonsense to get out of the rain when the bucket shop closes.  Sure, they say that they want to keep these state mandates, but if these precious state mandates are so damn important, why aren’t these stupid liberal democrats instituting them all the time?  Hell, I hadn’t even heard of a state insurance mandate until I read this article; and if President Bush has his way, I never will again.