Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Analyzing the Divergence, Pt.5 – The Bush-driven ‘Magic Bus’.

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Some advantages are presented, while other, more serious, consequences are glossed over with vagaries. The advantages are all most people are aware of; cheaper health insurance and more choices in health insurance. But, just like the housing market, there are also foreboding forces that are invisible at the onset. The housing market began to flourish with the Bush ascendancy when the existing economy collapsed. Poor Mr. Greenspan did his best with the extremely limited tools at his disposal. He ‘pressed the accelerator to the floor, in hopes to get the economy over the mountain’. The ‘accelerator’ was the ‘Federal Interest Rate’ – tied to Prime. The ‘mountain’ was the devastated economy after the 2000 election with its new White House administration. The ‘bus driver’ was Alan Greenspan. The only means available to Mr. G to control economic growth was the ‘accelerator’ (Fed.Int.Rate). Under ordinary circumstances, this works well. But this was no ordinary circumstance. With the ‘pedal to the floor’ (Prime Interest lowered to 0%), the ‘bus’ (economy) only inched along, with miles to go. Poor Mr. G had no more control; Prime was ALREADY at 0%. So we threw him under the bus. The next several years proved to the world how the invisible hand of the free market resolves itself without regulation. The same rules apply to health insurance or anything else left to unregulated free market forces; like the housing market.

So we can see now what’s at stake and how easy it is to gloss over the significance of turning our health insurance system over to the ‘invisible hand of the free market’. Without a responsible White House administration to ‘steer the bus’ of the health insurance system, it will certainly go off the road and, perhaps, over the cliff.

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