GA Senate passes ALEC health-insurance bill allowing out-of-state policies avoiding GA regulation

[highplainsdem]

The Republicans haven't been able to get national laws passed to allow health insurance to be sold across state lines. Which is good for consumers, as Ezra Klein explained in the Washington Post a year ago, when he called selling health insurance across state lines a "terrible, no good, very bad health-care idea."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/selling_insurance_across_state.html


Of course the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) loves the idea. (At times I wonder if there are any "terrible, no good, very bad" legislative ideas ALEC doesn't love.)

And they are, as usual, trying to change state laws.

And they just succeeded in Georgia, if the bill the state senate passed is signed by the governor.

From Jay Bookman, the award-winning columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/04/19/ga-may-forfeit-health-insurance-authority/

Ga. may forfeit health-insurance authority

7:37 am April 19, 2011, by Jay


“You can fix ignorant, but you can’t fix stupid,” state Sen. Steve Thompson of Marietta warned his colleagues last week. “And this bill is just stupid.”

Thompson was right, but 37 of his fellow senators went ahead and voted for House Bill 47 anyway. As a result, the health-insurance bill now sits in the hands of Gov. Nathan Deal, needing only his signature for final passage.

According to its champions, including state Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, state Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, and others, the bill merely allows the sale of individual health-insurance policies across state lines, which is a longtime conservative goal.

In fact, the model for the bill was provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-funded group based in Washington that markets conservative ideology to state legislators. That ideology holds that selling individual policies across state lines would increase competition and thus lower the price of health insurance.

-snip-

Bookman points out that with this vote "Georgia legislators voted to cede regulatory control over their own citizens to unknown regulators in an unknown state, people with no incentive to care about what happens in Georgia or to Georgians" -- and they've done this "for purely ideological reasons."

Which, as Sen Thompson correctly said, is "just stupid."

At least if you're concerned about representing the people of Georgia, as state senators should be.

If you're primarily concerned about representing corporate interests -- as ALEC is -- this is a win. It's just a win at the expense of the people, like so many other "wins" by ALEC.

[highplainsdem]

1. Chip Rogers, named by Bookman as one of the bill's champions, is on ALEC's board of directors:

http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Board_of_Directors

[immoderate]

2. Let's privatize government and run it like a business...

Shrink wrap legislation, complete with legislators means one stop shopping with ALEC.

The savings will not be passed on to the consumer. :eyes:

--imm

[highplainsdem]

3. Yes, one-stop shopping with ALEC. They're actually suggesting part-time legislatures with small

staffs are better for states. See this topic about an opinion piece cowritten by an ALEC task force director:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x910989

Of course that kind of change would make ALEC's model legislation even more important for those legislators...

[immoderate]

5. Perfect! They could phone it in!

--imm

[kenny blankenship]

6. I thought that's what the lottery was.

Customers pay a lot, get nothing. The perfect business plan.

[TheKentuckian]

4. That is a special and ideological stupid. Why not control your own affairs and just terminate

regulation and oversight?

Shrink the pig craziness, I guess. Why not have the apparatus eating the budget to justify more of their agenda once they are de-fanged.

The people running the show aren't stupid, they're wicked. The stupid are those that believe all this horseshit.