In Favor of Options – Even Non-Government Ones!

Hurrah to the Projo editorial board, for recognizing that governmental regulations can artificially increase the price of health insurance in non-rational ways…

We noticed the other week, for instance, that an insurance policy in Maryland has a premium half the size, and with better coverage, than a similar policy sold by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, but other than by moving to Maryland there is no way to buy it....

Getting rid of the antitrust exemption and letting people shop for insurance nationally would be good steps in controlling costs.

There is some chatter in the internet about the best route to change the laws (see here, for example), but the point is that medical inflation rates greatly in excess of the basic inflation rate are not the result of some unalterable force of nature. They've been created, in large part, by the unintended consequences of poorly-thought out laws -- laws that can be changed if their adverse impacts have created problems that are bigger than the original problems they were intended to address.