For years I've wondered why conservatives have been so insistent on allowing companies to sell insurance across state lines.
Prior to Obamacare, Insurance was regulated by the states. State by state regulations would determine the behavior of health pools. A health pool in Utah behaves dramatically different from one in California. To be able to sell insurance across state lines, insurance would need to be regulated at the Federal Level.
Perhaps this is the reason:
In our present system health care is socialized at the employer level. In this bizarre system, employers place the health care resources of their work force into a single pool. Employers can then leverages the health care of their employees for political and economic gain.
Wall Street and big business see the United States as a single market. Big businesses like to have entities in multiple states to grab as large a share of this market as possible. When big business seeks to expand nationwide they have to set up separate health care pools in each state. This reduce their ability to leverage health care.
Regulating health care at the Federal level (so that insurers could sell insurance across state lines) would allow Wall Streets and Big Business to consolidate the health care of their employees into a single pool that would have greater leverage.
Unlike conservatives, I prefer small business and local control. I have so thoroughly broken with The Tories conservatives that I even question the wisdom of socializing health care at the employer level. Giving employers control over the health care resources of their employers creates a situation where employers can act like the feudal lords of old.
Speaking of Feudal Lords. Did you know that the grand ideology of Conservatism was created by King Williamn IV in the 1830s as an effort to rebrand the Tory Party in the wake of electoral reform.
The goal of Conservatism (The New Tories) was to preserve the social structure of the feudal system.
The Tories (also known as Conservatives) favor socializing health care at the employer level because it creates a class society with a distinct employer class that owns the resources of the nation and a working class that lives from hand to mouth dependent on the benefits given by the employers.
In the old world conservatives still proudly bear the name "Tory." In the United States, Conservatives are whimpering cowards who simply deflect conversations and refuse to engage in open debate about health care policy like the slimy little worms that conservatives are.
The issue of "buying insurance across state lines" is a perfect example of the way that Tories engage in conversation. Insurance is a regulatory product. Health care pools behave according to the state regulations. The great conservative cause of "buying insurance across state lines" means transferring control of insurance from the state to the federal government.
Conservatives will speak about state's rights in one sentence then demand the ability to buy insurance across state lines in the next (failing to mention that the sentences are are contradictions). Conservatism today is as flawed and corrupt an ideology as it was in 1830s when the Tory Party changed its name to "The Conservative Party."
The conservative cause of buying insurance across state lines means the creation of a single health care market controlled by central bankers on Wall Street with even less local control than we have today. Trump and his conservative followers are marching in the wrong direction.
