Once upon a time, if one wanted to have health insurance, one had to go get it from an insurance agent. Presumably, one shopped around, compared prices and benefits offered, and purchased the policy that met their needs. Coverage was straight-forward ... there was a deductible, and once that was met, everything was covered at a percentage, usually 80%. These policies were never intended to cover everything 100% - certainly not low cost items like birth control - but instead to do what insurance is meant to do - protect the policy holder from financial devastation due to unexpected and unforeseen costs. That all began to change in 1971 when President Nixon instituted wage controls as a means of controlling inflation. Employers could no longer compete for workers using salary as an enticement. So, they started using perks - and the most sought after perk was the employer-paid health insurance policy. Over time, the individual policies morphed into the group plans - in which the premiums were not calculated on individual risk, but on the whole group. Then came HMOs, PPOs and now, a return to the old deductible and co-pay plan. Soon nearly every employer offered some form of medical benefit to the employees. Then the government got involved. Rules on who must be covered, and how and so on, were implemented. Tax rules applied to the employee contribution of the premium, and the IRS was given control over the medical savings plans, now known as FSAs. First, one could use them to cover anything related to health - vitamins, bandaids, OTC medications - now the rules and regs on what one can purchase with their own money could fill reams of paper. And for every purchase, one must submit documentation of the purchase showing clearly that it is a covered item, or the full weight of the IRS bureaucracy will come to bear. Still, for those who have ongoing and regular medical costs, it provides a way to spread the costs out evenly through the year, with the funds withheld from the paycheck with the bonus tax savings of that being pre-tax dollars. But that was apparently too beneficial - the amount one can put into an FSA is now limited to $2500 a year. Many people with high deductible plans, or high out of pockets costs have really taken a hit with this change. So now what used to be a perk, offered by an employer to entice employees, is now government mandated and regulated. Every employer with more than 50 full time employees MUST provide medical insurance, and the policies offered MUST meet certain government mandate coverage requirements, else they must pay a fine (*cough* tax). How the heck did we get here? And whats next? Will the government step in and control and make mandatory other employee perks and benefits? On site daycare, uniforms/wardrobe allowance, meals, transportation, product and service discounts .... where will it end? The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, enshrined in our Constitution limits on how much power and control the government could have over individuals. In recent decades, there has been a non-stop effort by our elected government officials to side-step or ignore those limits, giving themselves ever more power and control over our daily lives. We have now reached a tipping point, some say we have already passed it, beyond which we will not be able to wrest control away and return to a government of, by and for the people. There are those, both on the liberal left and even those on the right, who call people such as me, and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the Tea Party and other liberty-minded individuals, crazy whacko birds or extremists or even terrorists for saying such things. But the idea that each of us is a sovereign individual with natural rights to which we are born, rights that are sacred and the government should be duty-bound to protect, is the very idea on which this nation was founded. So, just how crazy are we? A better question might be, how crazy does one have to be to give up ones freedom in exchange for some free stuff?
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 22:45:21 +0000
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