Regulatory Commissars: How to lower prices

The spectacle of liberals in fiscally strapped states making unrealistic and unsupportable promises of government-controlled health-insurance schemes is providing Republicans with a chance to campaign on conservative ideas in the field of healthcare. Some conservatives have begun to take action on this topic.

In Florida, the state legislature unanimously approved Republican Governor Charlie Crist’s proposal to allow insurers to sell cheaper insurance containing fewer of the costly government requirements that price consumers out of the market. Only in overregulated markets does the idea of shedding costly government requirements to enable entities to meet consumer desires seem radical. In New Jersey, where the health-insurance market was destroyed by state-government intervention in the 1990s, Republican Assemblyman Jay Webber will introduce legislation to let residents purchase low-cost health insurance from any policy issued in any other state. Despite New Jersey’s costly mandates, Webber’s reform will prove ineffective unless the state also discards the guaranteed-issue and community-rating laws that increased premiums for a family policy anywhere from 500 to 700 percent. (No, that’s not a misprint—New Jersey insurance costs are about double those of states lacking these laws.)

Health-insurance reform is an issue conservatives can win on—if they quit acting like big-government liberals. Billions in unsustainable debt through expanding bankrupt government programs is never a good idea, nor is it conservative. Conservatives succeed only when they act like conservatives.

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