Obamacare as visual metaphor

Imagine that Health Insurance is like meat.  Everyone likes meat, who doesn't.  For this metaphor lets say health insurance is like cows.

Like health insurance has been definied now, food is in this metaphor considered  a "right" and therefore MUST be provided by the government.

Now, cows are expensive, and are subjected to the laws of supply and demand like everything else is (as is healthcare).  Would doing the following raise or lower the cost (and /or) quality of meat?

Step 1.  Require EVERYONE to eat meat, regardless of their desires. 

Now some people like vegetables and some people eat only fish or chicken, but NOW we are going to require everyone to eat cows.

But we as Americans cannot allow people to make these choices.  People are going to be REQUIRED to eat meat.

Now, question 1 is this.  Will the requiring of EVERYONE to eat meat INCREASE or DECREASE the demand on meat?

If you said decrease, well..... math obviously wasn't your strong suit.  So, we now have a big increase in the demand for meat and we move on to step 2.


Step 2.  We are not only going to require EVERYONE to not only eat meat but to eat FILET MIGNON. 

Some people like hamburger (which  would be the equivalent of catastrophic health insurance coverage)

Relatively cheap and does the job.  Although not as tasty as higher cost plans, eating hamburger will essentially get cow meat into your body for the least amount of money.

And some people want more exotic coverage (mental health services, holistic medicine, plastic surgery etc).  This would be like Filet Mignon in the insurance example.

Now if we view the Massachusetts model as a guide (and it makes sense to since it is the model that most resembles the Bacus bill now in the Senate) mandates from the state legislature have required that all citizens that were buying hamburger now must start buying filet mignon. 

There is no reason to not strongly suspect that Congress, in their infinite mischief in the future and their uncontrollable urge to "help" people,  will pile more and more mandates for covering more and more health conditions.  It is probable that low-cost, high deductible, catastrophic coverage that is common now for peope to buy will essentially be mandated out of existence.

So, we now have a double whammy.  Everyone has to buy MEAT and everyone has to make sure that meat is FILET MIGNON.

Again, is this increasing or decreasing the demand on meat?

Now let's move on to Step 3.

Let's tell ranchers, those who invest in growing the cows to provide the meat, that they are not going to be highly regulated and that we are going to reduce their potential to make profits.

 

Will that increase the number of ranchers? or decrease them?

With a decreased profit motive, would ranchers invest in genetic research or other expensive techniques to increase their herd size (this would be like the pharmaceutical and drug devices business), or would they find that the billions of investment would not be best spent elsewhere, say chickens perhaps?

Will decreasing research and development in herd size increase and reducing the number of ranchers INCREASE or DECREASE the supply of cows?

or

So, now we have an increased demand on cows, and we have also severely restricted what part of the cow people are allowed to buy and we have (through regulation, increased taxes) decreased  the supply of cows.  What happens to the price?

Ah, but you say, HERE is where we need the public option.  The Public Option will keep this from happening.


So, the competition immune Government will come in to save the day and will crush those evil ranchers who are refusing to provide cows for low prices to honest Americans who want meat.

Now there are no ranchers left, and only the government is left to provide all Americans their Filet Mignon.  Yummy, I can't wait.

Now, the basic rules of Supply and Demand have not changed.  The demand for Cows is still blisteringly high and the supply of cows is permamently diminished, so....... Now that the government is involved what are our options?

Well, we could just keep borrowing the money to provide Filet Mignon to everyone and hope this works itself out in the future.  One major Downside to this theory is we could end up like Zimbabwe thus making hamburgers cost approximately 3 billion dollars each through rampant inflation and currency devaluation.

Or, we could start rationing care, which would lead to that situation that the left keeps saying is a myth.  The much maligned "Death Panel" which means the government will decide who gets to eat meat and YOU as an individual will have no say in it what-so-ever.

Wouldn't the BEST SOLUTION just be that we allow the Supply and Demand for meat work itself out and avoid all of this nonsense in the first place.  If the demand for cows gets big, and ranchers think there is money to be made, they will raise more cows and thus decrease the cost of meat but also make sure it is of high quality and widely available. 

If people want to eat hamburger, let them, or chicken, fish, corn etc. 

It works for cows NOW so there is no reason for it not to work on Health Insurance (and medical devices, drugs, etc.)

Regardless of the fairness of the issue, nothing is exempt from the laws of supply and demand, and there is no spinning the facts any way to show that anything has not ultimately been subjected to these pressures. 

I think I will now go have some chicken, and maybe a salad now.   I might even have a side of Tuna.