Month: February 2010

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And if I had just one wish, just one wish in the whole world…if I had one wish, it’d be for politics to change–that good ideas weren’t so easily dismissed by demanding impossible solutions.

In this episode of South Park, Kyle’s parents don’t want him to attend a concert, so they come up with an impossible task. They won’t allow him to go to the concert until he brings democracy to Cuba.

The health care debate brought this South Park episode to mind, because objections to purchasing health insurance across state lines are met with a similar response. Create a list of impossible goals to make the idea just go away.

Objections are raised to purchasing health insurance across state lines because it doesn’t do the following:

• Cover everyone
• Address the problem of preexisting conditions
• Cap Out-of-Pocket Expenses
• 100% Coverage for Check-Ups, Preventive Health Care
• Guaranteed Insurance Renewal

Purchasing health care across state lines won’t do any of the above, either. It also won’t bring peace to the middle east or democracy to Cuba or cure cancer. What it will do is lower the cost of health insurance, making the goals above easier to achieve.

The truth is there isn’t any plan that can do all the above and bring down costs at the same time. Its not going to happen, because it violates the laws of supply and demand. It’s a fantasy and has been from its inception.

Purchasing health insurance across state lines has these advantages:

• More people would be covered because they could afford insurance
• Break up the control employers have over health care
• More choices to those who can’t find coverage
• The freedom for an individual to choose the amount of insurance
• Not a government program which will cost billions to maintain

We have choices in life insurance, car insurance, home insurance. They don’t have the problems suggested by all the fear, uncertainty and doubt arguments made by opponents.

Its time politicians stopped playing these parental mind games, and started looking at real world solutions to real problems.