Reality. Reason. Rights.

Quick, how many commercials do you regularly see for car insurance? Safe Auto, Geico, Allstate, The General, Esurance, Progressive, State Farm, Nationwide, etc. From the girl with pink hair, to the gecko, to the cavemen, to the Safe Auto jingle, to Dennis Haysbert asking if I’m “in good hands” when I want him to say, “hats for bats, keep bats warm,” auto insurance advertising is everywhere. Now how many ads can you recall that try to sell you health insurance? Chirp…chirp…chirp. What’s my point? Well, we’ll get to that.

If you caught Meet The Press this weekend, you heard Chris Dodd repeat a standard line in support of the public option; that we need it to “create competition.” A bit more than a month ago on the same program, Chuck Schumer said the same nonsense several times along with the phrase “level the playing field.”

They claim that the goverment needs to step in and create a less expensive (if you can believe that) option thereby forcing the insurance companies to compete with each other for clients. The rising costs of healthcare, among other things, is their proof that insurers are extorting consumers. So they want you to believe that the current playing field is lopsided in favor of the insurance providers and, more importantly, they want you to blame the free market for this situation.

The playing field they see has the big, mean insurance providers on one side and the underdog consumers on the other. Their delusion continues with how they see themselves; as the morally perfect referee who needs to step in to defend the little guy. A more realistic look at this game metaphor is to think of the government as a fight promoter that fixes matches hoping not to get caught. They have the power to change the rules whenever they like, and if things go wrong they shift the blame. And as for a level playing field, the government clearly has the high ground as the only side with the legal authority to use force.

If they really wanted to create competition, it would be quite easy to do. They just have to ALLOW IT. You see, the current state of the healthcare industry is because competition is restricted. There are thousands of rules that restrict companies from competing. There are two changes that would immediately create competition.

The first is to allow Americans to buy insurance in any state (or country even; you can put your money in a foreign bank) that they would like. This would allow consumers many more options and prices to choose from. Instead of a few options in a given state, there could be hundreds to choose from.

But having more to choose from won’t make a difference as long as your insurance is tied to your job. So the second change is to remove the tax advantages of getting insurance through an employer. Consumers really don’t shop for insurance because it’s tied to a job. This means they never understand the costs because they don’t have to. Detaching it from employment would give consumers the freedom to switch insurance providers while keeping the same job, and vice versa.

The senators don’t want competition. They want more control. And while the senators’ obfuscation of the issue annoys me, what kills me is that no one on either show stood up for capitalism by showing how wrong they were. This is easy to do and brings me back to my initial question about automobile insurance advertising.

Government interference destroys competition, and in the insurance industry this is clearly evident by the lack of advertising. This is a multi-trillion dollar industry without commercials! In America!! Billy Mays is rolling over in his grave. If you allow competition by making the changes suggested above, along with repealing the other myriad government restrictions on the industry, there would be health insurance commercials between spots for GoDaddy and Coke during halftime of the Super Bowl in no time, and real competition.