health insurance mandate

How Do These People Avoid Cognitive Dissonance?

by Ryan Young on March 12, 2010

in Healthcare, Insurance, Politics as Usual, Regulation

Supporters of the health care bill spend a lot of time attacking health insurance companies.

The health care bill, by the way, would legally require people to give a lot of money to those same insurance companies. A lot of money. It would be the largest corporate gift Washington has ever given out — as much as $1.5 trillion over ten years by one estimate.

Health insurers’ loudest detractors are actually their best friends, and they don’t even seem to realize it. Apparently, regulatory capture is not always a conscious process.

Is Cognitive Dissonance an Insured Condition?

by Ryan Young on October 21, 2009

in Economy, Healthcare, Legal, Regulation

Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:

1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.

2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.

You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.

Perhaps this is a warped Washington version of what one hand giveth, the other taketh away.