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Politicians guilty for expensive insurance

The Rocky Mountain News published my letter to the editor on Tuesday, May 6 (print scan).

Darla Stuart (Speakout April 22) writes that since “Colorado’s citizens and businesses deserve to know the real cost of the health-care insurance,” politicians should force insurance companies to provide “transparency.” But we really deserve to know how politicians have inflated insurance costs in the first place.

Tax policy encourages employer-based insurance, which essentially chains us to one insurer. Shielded from competition, insurers need not compete on price very much.

State-level bureaucrats succumb to special interests by burdening small-group policies with many benefits we do not need. The Congressional Budget Office reports that such mandated benefits increase premiums by at least six percent [p. 16, 20], and possibly more than ten. It also reports that community rating laws increase premiums by nine percent [p. 16].

What’s becoming increasingly transparent is where allegedly well-intentioned controls like House Bill 1389 will lead: politician-controlled health care and insurance where bureaucrats make decisions that rightfully belong to you and your physician.

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