During Donald Trump’s campaign, he talked several times about how he wants to erase the state lines that, currently, insurance companies can’t cross, and he’s also said that he thinks pharmaceutical companies should lower prices from levels at which he says they are “getting away with murder.” Frankly, it seems, for a Republican, that it would be a reasonable idea to let them compete. However, I think there’s something bigger going on.
First of all, the most basic reason why you can’t sell health insurance across state lines is because regulations prevent it on the basis of risk to the general public. Apparently, you could more easily sell really cheap plans with little to no coverage and only sell such useless insurance to healthy people, leaving sick people without insurance.
However, to me, that doesn’t make any sense. If it’s so heavily regulated, why couldn’t there be a federal regulation that applies to the insurance company regardless of what state it’s in? Historically and just as much today, each state regulates their insurance industries, with little involvement by the federal government. Why? Also, why does it matter? Is it really a states’ rights issue? Moreover, why do the state governments care so much about as well as differ so much on how to regulate the insurance industry?
I get it. It could be incredibly complicated. After, we’re talking about people’s lives here. However, I don’t buy that so much. Maybe we used to be talking about people’s lives here, but now we’re just talking about insurance companies making money, funding campaigns, and really doing little to nothing for their customers.
Therefore, I think it’s time for a change.
I think it’s time to force insurance companies to fight with each other over customers so we can get prices down. There’s really nothing left in the insurance industry regarding healthcare or life-saving treatment or, like I said, taking care of people. It’s just about investing premiums in the stock market and hiring hundreds of lawyers to get them out of paying when someone actually gets sick. Therefore, the states clearly aren’t doing enough and the federal government needs to step in.
I believe this will be good for insured people because they will be able to choose from multiple companies, which will force companies to provide a variety of plans. Given that they won’t want to compete on price, they’ll probably choose a diversification plan, which could help customers shape the industry in a way that gets insurance companies to create plans that have what we want and don’t have what we don’t want. Therefore, the high price might be less of a waste of money.
Also, it’ll be a great opportunity for disgusting insurance companies to buy each other, get even larger and more able to control price. This will eventually require anti-trust investigations by the DOJ, which will further give the federal government the ability to guide the industry in a way that is good for the people and not just the insurance industry.
To recap, better plans and more federal oversight. In other words, we’ll let the insurance companies standardize themselves across state lines, making it easier for the federal government to pass a bill that will affect all of them in all 50 states and we’ll incentivize them to show us their cards by merging with and acquiring each other in order to abuse the American public even further. However, this time, the DOJ will be able to control more of the pricing issue via anti-trust investigations.
This, by the way, has nothing at all to do with the ACA; nothing to do with getting more people insured; and nothing to do with pre-existing conditions, although he’s said he’d keep that in the plan that we know he doesn’t have. Trump has no idea about a national health system and likely doesn’t care at all about anyone but himself. However, if he wants control, this oughta do it because he’ll take control over one of the largest industries away from the states and give it right to the federal government, which is looking more and more like a large group of people within which only two people, Bannon and himself, have any control over the country.
This is one of those issues where I don’t know whether Trump is looking out for the American people or just accidentally doing something that might work well. After all, it takes a really smart man to screw up such a great country. Trump is really not a smart man. So! Here’s to hoping he screws up so badly in his plans to destroy the country that he actually does something right!