Insurance: the last defense against socialism

When I was in grad school, I realized that the lure of socialism will always win out where people are relatively simple.

Socialism works like a drug pusher, it hooks junkies with a lovely feeling; then, the junky becomes the slave of the pusher. The US republic always depended upon individualistic responsibility and freedom from intrusion by the central government, so the National Socialist (NAZI), fascist, Progressive movements of the early Twentieth Century fell short, mostly, from my view, because the ills they identified were addressed by that evil, capitalist marketplace of ideas and the awareness of business people that if they wanted to stay out of a gulag, things had better change.

I recalled the Grachii brothers of Rome who, though rich, build a power base by pandering to the wants of the average person. This is an old fraud.

So I concluded that statism would always surface as the winner because it would pander to the fears of the voter and force collectivism to assure security to the fearful. Today, the fears are whipped up daily in the U.S. by the collectivists.

Two things had saved the U.S. from the early triumphs of socialism before and after WWI.

First, we were a republic and everyone understood they had a hand in the government, one that worked for them. They took care of their community and the state regulated life; the federal government was annoying squeak that was useful when a war broke out or some national matter had to be addressed. Now, the federal government is a remote power that tells us what to do and how. So much for a republic. The second was the use of insurance.

Insurance was the free market way for people to aggregate for protection against individual loss. This was a good system as any government system would be unconstitutional, confused, expensive, and unreasonable.

Over time, the insurance business was subjected to the collective under the lie of consumer protection. Competition is now forbidden across state lines (what Constitution provision is this?). Power centers took control and populate the insurance departments. (See Atlas Shrugged). There is little competition in the business, a terrible thing, but, still, much better than a state controlled system. This is becoming clear as cost goes up, choice disappears, and we are told older people really can't be helped.

Anyone who understands the basic of history, formerly a serious subject in our schools, intuitively understands our nation was built upon the inviolability of the contract, availability of credit, and protection via insurance, which concept was created our of Lloyds to protect sailing ships on long voyages. Indeed, even stock and commodity futures are a form of insurance. The system was brilliant.

Now that the republic has become a FOX News fantasy, attention is directed to destroying the alternative to socialism.

Obamacare has nothing to do with health, it is, in the end, a plan to eliminate insurance companies. Democrats see nothing wrong with not reading the "Affordable Health Care Act," what BS, bill before voting on it; they were assured of its ultimate goal, not that is would work, which is immaterial.  Poor sap Republicans actually try to argue that the core of the plan is flawed. What a waste of effort. Of course, it is, so what? Duh. It is not supposed to continue one the people see the need for Big Brother's total control.

The final act of the Obamacare con has been described by another Emanuel, Ezeckiel:

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of the law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

“The good news is you won’t have insurance companies to kick around much longer. The system is changing,” Emanuel writes in an op-ed on New Republic. “As a result, insurance companies as they are now will be going away. Indeed, they are already evolving. For the next few years insurance companies will both continue to provide services to employers and, increasingly, compete against each other in the health insurance exchanges.”

Due to Obamacare, “new actors will force insurance companies to evolve or become extinct,” he continues. Instead, new groups called “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) must start competing directly in the health care exchanges for exclusive contracts with employers.

In this March 11, 2009 photo, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, special advisor for health care at the Office of Management and Budget, speaks at the American Medical Association’s annual conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, Ezekiel J. Emanuel values intelligence, but don’t accuse him of Harvard-itis. He’ll tell you an Ivy League degree doesn’t prove anyone’s worth. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The ACOs will have “standardized, guideline-driven care plans for most major conditions and procedures to increase efficiency,” says Emanuel, the brother of Obama’s former chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“They will have figured out how to harness their electronic medical records to better identify patients who will become sick and how to intervene early as well as how to care for the well-identified chronically ill so as to reduce costs,” he notes.

More from the New Republic op-ed:

The key skill these ACOs and hospital systems lack—the skill insurance companies specialize in—is the actuarial capacity to predict and manage financial risk. But over the next decade this is something they will develop—or purchase. After all, actuarial science is not rocket science, even if it involves a lot of mathematical equations. And with that skill, ACOs and hospital systems will become integrated delivery systems like Kaiser or Group Health of Puget Sound. Then they will cut out the insurance company middle man—and keep the insurance company profits for themselves. Therefore, increasingly these ACOs and hospital systems will transform themselves into integrated delivery systems, entering insurance exchanges and negotiating with employers, in direct competition with insurance companies.
As the ACOs become more established, Emanuel claims contracts between the health systems and employers will become more common, thus “cutting out the insurance companies.”

Once the health systems “make the jump to offering coverage in the exchanges, the health insurance companies will only have a few options if they want to survive, according to Emanuel.

“First, they can refuse to change, in which case they will eventually go out of business,” he writes. “Second, they can shift their business to focus on offering services they have expertise in, particularly analytics, actuarial modeling, risk management, and other management services.”

Finally, the “third evolutionary path is that health insurance companies may transform themselves into integrated delivery systems.”

“So be prepared to kiss your insurance company good-by. (sic)

So much for the lies told about Obamacare, by Obama.  

So, the law interferes with private contracts, unconstitutional, is designed to control an entire industry, unconstitutional, creates a protected class of competitors, unconstitutional, and establishes the central government as ruler of healthcare, declared unconstitutional in the recent case (no basis for government industry, but a tax was constitutional. This is dopey, but it was the decision.)

The law remains in tact, which is easy since the president amends it by edict when it can't work, and your choices begin with an option to consider a new country, stop earning money, not own a business with employees, hide your assets, get food stamps; you know, become socialists whose goals are to play the system and, then, stop producers from leaving the country with their assets. 

An alternative choice that may help is to vote in the coming primary against ALL incumbents. If a few good ones are lost, too bad; as we know, it takes a luke warm intellect to be a politician. Most of us do not know what lurks in the minds of the ruling class, so just say no. What does matter is honesty and a respect for the rule of law - our old law. This makes voting simple, vote NONE OF THE ABOVE

PS:  actuarial science is far more difficult than being a "rocket scientists," whatever that is, but how would a socialist know that. The government could just have the IRS compute actuarial projections, with the proper modifications for the select rules of the Animal Farm.