Let Freedom Ring

Michelle Malkin tastes the delights of private sector health insurance:

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

No doubt in some sense like the Frosts, the Malkins clearly aren't a "poor" family. Nevertheless, they can't afford any meaningful insurance against health care risk on the individual market. And yet, many people -- including people who aren't poor -- don't necessarily have jobs that provide health insurance. Or maybe they do have jobs that provide health insurance but might like to leave them in order to become successful right-wing pundits or stay-at-home dads or start small businesses but in many cases they can't do that. This is especially true if you've had health problems in the past, in which case you daren't go without insurance for even the smallest amount of time lest you become uninsurable in the future. And if you do have good insurance and become sick, your insurance company will then send its minions to work as hard as they possibly can -- deploying every bit of energy and ingenuity the private sector can muster -- to find a reason to deny your claim.