By Stephen L. Hall
How could conservatives have gotten it so very wrong. The very purpose of the state, of the construction of society itself is very different that what we have commonly been lead to believe. The business of government is for the common man essential in lowering insurance rates.
Watching television with the current inauguration hoopla and the vitriolic and violent reactions to even the remote possibility of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, has convinced me that conservatives need to make an effort to understand the very real and poignant pain and anguish of liberals the world over.
In order to understand the pillars of liberalism, so that we can be more compassionate and understanding towards them, we need to admit this fundamental truth that the function of government is to run the commercial enterprises of our society. They are from the government and they are here to help.
On every media, in the halls of academia, and in the halls of power they are repeatedly warning us that the conservative path with cause insurance rates for health care to skyrocket. Obamacare itself was passed to keep insurance rates from getting out of hand and bankrupting America’s vital and strategic insurance industry.
CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, with their infallible predictive capabilities and long history of immaculately accurate economic forecasting, warned that any repeal of Obamacare will “literally” double health insurance rates. More threateningly, 10% of the population of the Unites States will be left bereft of health insurance.
“By 2026, CBO estimates 32 million people would be uninsured and premiums will have doubled.”
If you fellow conservatives think that insurance rates have gone through the roof under Obamacare, just imagine how high those rates would have been without it. If you lost your doctor or your insurance plan, imagine life without the liberals looking out for you with Obamacare. Clearly, by this time without their invaluable oversight, there would not be a doctor or nurse left in America or any medical care at all unless the patient earned at least a million dollars a year in order to be able to afford it.
This recent liberal call to save our poor conservative lives from our own folly is nothing new, I experienced it decades ago. More importantly than our meager lives, our livelihoods would have been completely consumed by skyrocketing insurance rates without the government to protect us.
There was a time when the drinking age in most states allowed children of the tender and vulnerable age of eighteen to consume adult beverages. The wise and benevolent liberals of Congress used all of the financial powers of the federal government to force the recalcitrant state governments which were allowing this to happen bending to the evil and foolish conservative pressures to make twenty-one the drinking age for everyone in every states of the union.
They did this by threatening to withhold sending that money forcibly taken from those states, I mean taxed, back to those states in the form of matching highway funds for highway construction. If those children were 18, 19, and 20 were going to be allowed to drink, then the federal liberals were certainly not going to permit the states to have good roads upon which those drunkards could travel.
The public was informed that the purpose of this necessary change in the laws of every state imposed upon them by the federal government over an issue nowhere mentioned in the Constitution was to the effect that it would lower car liability insurance rates for those states which complied.
There was also a time of Camelot when liberals managed to push through Congress against foolish conservative opposition a national lowering of the speed limit to fifty-five miles per hour national wide. While the ostensible reason for this federal restraint upon the driving public was in order to save fuel due to increasing prices of oil and thus gasoline prompted by OPEC.
But when the public chafed under this regulatory environment, even to the point where Sammy Hagar wrote a rather popular song regarding his inability to drive at the regulatory designated speed limit. Those liberal regulators quickly pointed to the number of lives “saved” by the decrease in speed limits across the country.
However, once again those clueless and anti-social conservatives started pointing out that Canada had the same corresponding decrease in highway fatalities despite having not lowered their speed limit, mindlessly conjecturing that the decrease in fatalities might have been more related to gasoline, of petrol for the English reader, prices than the speed limit.
All of this reactionary contrarian anti-intellectual stubbornness from the recalcitrant conservatives leads liberals to the mistaken impression that it is the true desire of every conservative to make insurance unaffordable for everyone, to drive drunkenly and recklessly as children, and basically to have people dying in the streets.
Conservatives even oppose the provisions for medicare for the elderly, medicaid for the poor, Veterans Administration ran hospitals for the veterans, and all of the other commercial functions which are the duties. If only conservatives would wake up and realize that the government is the best institution to provide for keeping the citizens’ insurance costs low and affordable, instead of letting those greedy “corporations” from exploiting the ignorance of those same conservatives.
It was after liberals in the Roosevelt administration imposed wage controls to keep the workers from exploiting their scarcity by demanding higher wages in the middle of WWII, that those evil business owners tried to spur wage competition between the workers by offering them “benefits” like health and dental insurance, that the liberal government regulators in Congress wrote tax breaks for these companies into the tax code.
States had initially in their courts ruled insurance as an illegal wager, being that gambling was illegal in every state of the union at the time, and a violation of public morals. However, they determined that there was not so much of a moral hazard for fraud and fakery because it was compensating for a loss rather than a wager for gain, thus they eventually permitted insurance.
However, our liberal protectors even within those states would not allow the free market to run roughshod over the hapless conservatives by permitting companies from offering insurance with unconscionable provisions across state lines without their careful review of the contractual language, unlike other commercial and private contracts.
Liberal lawmakers have even taken it upon themselves to determine what insurance for the hapless citizens are not only available, but which are necessary and mandatory. Liability car insurance has become mandatory in most states. Conservatives are forced to buy health insurance, because liberals know that we need it whether we want it or not. Obamacare even requires that the health insurance cover even pre-existing conditions.
Conservatives would foolishly point out that they believe the purpose of insurance was to insure against one’s own loss not to insure others against that person’s negligence. They might also point out that if the event or condition has already occurred then you really aren’t “insuring” anything. Liberals know so much better.
Each state then created their own insurance commission to prevent those greedy corporations from exploiting the citizens’ ignorance, because liberals recognize that the average citizen is far more ignorant and incapable than they are. It has the added benefit of keeping unhealthy competition out of the insurance markets, so that the public is protected from price wars and advertising by the insurance exploiters, I mean companies.
However, now they are in the streets publicly protesting even the mere discussion of repealing Obamacare and worse, replacing it with corporate competition across state lines. It is the one time you will hear liberals nationwide promoting the rights of states to limit competition in the insurance industry by their gatekeeper function of insurance commissions.
All of this government oversight and control promoted by liberal philosophy to protect the insurance rates of conservatives everywhere. So with this much love, caring, and concern from the liberals about the welfare and insurance rates of the obviously inferior philosophy of conservatives, I am left with one puzzling question. Why do those liberals always sound like they hate conservatives?
