Health Care BS

Masochist that I am, I’ve been perusing the Dems 2008 draft platform again. I can’t help myself. This thing is like a horrible accident from which I cannot avert my eyes.

It’s really astonishing that they could get so many irretrievably bad ideas into a single document. The one that caught my eye this morning was the call for an “end to to insurance discrimination”:

Health insurance plans should accept all applicants and be prohibited from charging different prices based on pre-existing conditions.

By using the term “discrimination,” the platform committee has couched this provision in the vernacular of “social justice,” but they’re really just rebranding an old regulatory boondoggle known as “guaranteed issue.”

A number of states have already enacted guaranteed-issue laws, and the end result is always a dramatic increase in premiums for everyone. Plus, as Michael New of the Heritage Foundation points out:

Many insurers quit offering insurance in states with guaranteed-issue laws, and the lack of competition results in still-higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.

Anyone think it’s a good idea to force the whole country to pay the huge insurance premiums now borne by the hapless residents of guaranteed-issue states like Massachusetts and New Jersey?

Well, a federal law ending “insurance discrimination” would produce that very result.