You pull up to a fast food drive thru and there are two choices. A huge, high-priced burger that comes with all the fixings and six side items, and a huge, high priced burger with that comes with all the fixings and six side items. You couldn’t possibly eat the whole thing. You want something smaller, cheaper and with different fixings.
You drive around to the window and ask why there are only two high-priced, identical options. The lady tells you they aren’t identical at all. One comes in a blue package, the other in a red, and no, you can’t get the burger any other way. There are no lower priced options.
You’d throw your hands up in disgust and drive to another fast food restaurant right away. Now imagine that by law, you find out when you pull up the next fast food restaurant that you aren’t allowed to eat there. You can only eat at the first restaurant. The politicians who cooked up this whacked out scheme would soon find themselves thrown out of office, probably violently. People simply wouldn’t tolerate it.
But they go along with it largely without complaint in the US, and in North Carolina, which was just ranked one of the nine least competitive health care markets in the country.
Just two companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and United Healthcare, control 81 percent of the state’s commercial health insurance policies, the American Medical Association says.
Essentially, your choice is between the Cadillac health care plan you can’t afford and the Cadillic health care plan you can’t afford. Consolidation, political cronyism, licensing that prohibits competition across state lines and an inability to buy across state lines has all but destroyed competition and locked state consumers into an insurance market hell. Obamacare will change none of this, while adding government subsidies for some to buy a big burger, charging younger consumers more for the burger and taking away a few of the sides.
But everyone will be guaranteed a place in the original drivethru any sensible consumer would drive away from within minutes once they read the menu.
