“Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23,” the Washington Post reports.
The Post quotes one Ethan Rome, executive director of the liberal advocacy group Health Care for America Now: “We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds. … [It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.”
This type of posturing is the pat move of liberals every time their designs for society are frustrated by the reality that other people pursue their self interests. The only way to get around that little problem of human nature is for Congress, instead of regulating business, to compel exactly the sort of behavior it wants—e.g., this particular company must sell this particular product at this particular price to these particular customers. But that would raise exactly the same problem raised by Obamacare’s mandate that individuals must purchase health insurance: Such a law would not be a regulation of commerce; it would be forcing people to engage in commerce that they would otherwise not engage in. And if the Constitution allows Congress to compel people to engage in commerce, then there are no constitutional limits to what Congress may do.
Note, by the way, that Mr. Rome engages in exactly the sort of behavior he describes as immoral, for as best we can tell, he doesn’t sell insurance to anybody at any price.