After reading Brian Kirwin’s dissection of Ben Marchi’s opposition to Bill Howell’s proposed autism insurance mandate, my thoughs alomst immediately went to Canada.
I know what you’re thinking: “Canada? Land of the single-payer system? Oh my God; he’s calling Bill Howell a socialist!!”
Breathe, people. Breathe. That wasn’t the Canada mental trigger in my mind. Instead, Kirwin and Howell reminded me of the great (if relatively young) sage of Canadian punditry: Paul Wells of Macleans, who sounded the warning against conventional wisdom with his four Rules of Politics. Number two caught my eye today:
If everyone in Ottawa knows something, it’s not true.
Down here, we’ve seen this happen repeatedly, from the “loss of Iraq” (2006), to the “tax increases are necessary for transportation” mantra (2007), to the “global warming is certain” (pick a year from 1990 to 2009), to “Afghanistan is ungovernable and unsolvable” (2010), to, well, this – and I’m not so sure about this one either.
For starters, it is, indeed, mandating insurance coverage – a cute way to hide the cost to an economy. James Miller, back when he was running for Senate in 1994 and the Clinton version of health-care nationalization was debated, had the best quip on the subject: A subsidy cost $100, but a mandate is “free”!
Kirwin’s response is to list a whole slew of current mandates and demand opponents of this mandate oppose those, too (Marchi, in the comments on Kirwin’s post, took him up on it). In effect, Kirwin is asking, “Why draw the line here on mandates?”
My response would be a little different than Marchi’s: Does anyone who asks that question ever want a line drawn? Kirwin’s argument is the typical “all-or-nothing” tactic, designed to scare reasonable people into “all.” I suspect most Virginians won’t see it that way.
Will the autism mandate be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Probably not, but it is a straw, and the camel will weaken. At some point, we have to recognize the burden is too heavy. The present would be a good place to start (lest we forget, the first conservative opinion journal, National Review, declared its purpose “to stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!'” – not “reverse”).
This is especially true when we look at the particulars of this mandate (HB 2467), which leads to three specific problems that Messrs. Kirwin and Howell don’t address.
1 – Locking employees in large firms: Like just about every mandate, this applies “only” to firms with 50 or more employees. That may seem to be friendly to small business, but entrepreneurs still face the indirect cost of having to compete with the mandated insurance package for employees. Said employees would be “stuck” with the large firm, and new businesses may be lost. Taking out the cost politically doesn’t mean it goes away economically.
2 – Unfunded mandate to the localities: Hap Connors is a supervisor in my county. He and I don’t agree on much, and when he rants and raves about “unfunded mandates from Richmond,” it sounds like a cop-out for another tax increase. That said, when Richmond does download cost to the localities, it should be questionned. This bill would, in fact, mandate the coverage for local government employees, meaning that Virginia taxpayers would foot the bill. The extra coverage will also make it that much mnore harder politically to cut local spending, which is largely personnel-driven. Thus we have another unintended consequence of this mandate: higher property taxes across the Commonwealth.
3 – the Obamacare factor: This bill specifically exempts any insurance plan in Obamacare’s “exchanges” from this mandate. This does the exact opposite of what states should be doing, i.e., making it easier for insurers to escape Washington’s “embrace.” Instead, this bill will drive insurers into Obamacare.
Is Brian really saying these objections are invalid? Because I can’t.
