There’s only one thing anyone really needs to know about big health insurance companies when it comes to health-care reform: they don’t want competition. Period. 

They don’t want to compete with a government plan. 

They don’t want to compete with small-business purchasing pools or within purchasing exchanges. 

They don’t want to compete with each other across state lines. 

This means that the only thing both liberals and conservatives can seem to agree on when it comes to health care – the need for competition – is the No. 1 thing that big insurance is lobbying against. 

And like the bully who rules the playground, they’re kind of winning, even when they’re losing – because the fight is still on their terms and enough people (Republicans and Democrats) will sit on the sidelines rather than tick them off. This type of complacency can – and very well might – lead to health-care “reform” that ignores and even hurts the group most in need of true competition in the insurance marketplace: small businesses. 

If one is a pro-free-market, then protecting an industry against over-reaching, costly regulations or excessive taxation is admirable and understandable. Protecting one from genuine competition? There’s no excuse. And it’s happening on Capitol Hill right now. Has been for years.

So to any Member of Congress who calls themselves pro-free-market: when insurance lobbyists call you this fall, don’t pick up the phone. You know what they want and you know, deep down, that it’s not right.

Jean Card has been a professional writer in Washington, D.C. for more than a dozen years.  Today, she is freelance writing and consulting, full-time. Jean is a native of Vermont and a graduate of Middlebury College. She lives and writes in Alexandria, VA with her husband, a new puppy and two rather poorly-behaved cats.