What a Tangled Web Government Weaves

Oh, the horror.  The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the government cannot require religious people to provide something against their religious beliefs just because they opened a business.  Now, rather than having their employer pay for their contraceptives, some women (those who voluntarily chose employment at Hobby Lobby or likeminded corporations) will have to pay for them.  Yes, the horror, the tragedy.  Next, it will be rent, food, car insurance, and cable TV.  What, the employer doesn't pay for any of those?  Huh.

I have long held that the corporation should provide nothing but a paycheck.  How the employee chooses to spend the money is then no business of the business.  You want health insurance, buy health insurance.  You want condoms, buy condoms.  The moment you force others to purchase your desires, it is inevitable that there will be conflict.  Furthermore, if someone else is buying it, the person using it has no incentive to keep costs down.  If someone else was paying the phone bill, will the user pay attention to roaming charges?  No.  This is always the problem with third party payers.  And that leads to rationing, like we see at the VA.  Unable to meet the demand, the VA would force veterans to wait long periods before getting care.

 

How did it come about that healthcare was provided by business?  Government interference in the market.  Yes, the government decided to play around with wage and price controls.  Always trying to find ways around such government meddling, businesses started offering 'benefits' that weren't classified as wages.  Voila!  Therefore, our current mess is the result of previous government efforts to fix things.  It worked out so well that the government needs to fix it again.  And that has worked out so well that President Obama has issued hundreds of waivers, multiple rewrites of the law, delays of enforcement, and accusations of Republican intransigence.

 

Government fixes usually lead to unforeseen problems that call for another government fix that leads to unforeseen problems that call for a government fix.  This process goes on until the government has complete control of an underperforming and wasteful industry, like education or Amtrak.  A better option is to get the government out of these industries (for which there is no Constitutional authority, by the way) and let private companies innovate.