Well-Informed Citizens

            For this Constitution Monday the topic of discussion is the need for well-informed Americans. Well-informed Americans know the principles of the Constitution. They study it and they understand it in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. Well-informed citizens are involved in civic affairs to a degree where they can tell if they are properly represented or not.

            This writer would find it difficult to say that people are well-informed when they elect and re-elect people like Maxine Waters. Do they know that her words and behavior make them the laughing stock of the nation? She does not seem to even think about what she says, but then she resembles other politicians, such as Nancy Pelosi and democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York.

            Speaking of Ocasio-Cortez, she seems to remove her foot from her mouth just in time to reinsert it on too many occasions. She may be less informed than either Maxine or Nancy – if that is possible! Ocasio-Cortez was elected to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, and she did not know the three branches of the federal government. She thought they were the presidency, Senate, and House. Someone ought to teach her that the three branches of the federal government are the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. The latest evidence that facts do not matter to her concerns health care.

            Ocasio-Cortez supports Senator Bernie Sanders' “Medicare for All” idea. His plan

“would transform the current U.S. health care system into a single-payer model,” according to Justice Haskins. Haskins rebuts Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that health insurance companies are “death panels” because they choose which treatments to cover.

For starters, health insurance companies are heavily regulated --  some of the most heavily regulated companies in the country, in fact – and they are already forced under the Affordable Care Act to cover “essential health” treatments, including emergency services, hospitalization, and some nonemergency treatments, like substance abuse services….

Second, the “death panels” she described aren’t death panels at all. Death panels are composed of government bureaucrats or policymakers who decide which health care treatments will be covered in a single-payer or government-run health care system.

The reason they have been labeled “death panels” is because under many single-payer proposals, the government is the only insurer, which means it has complete power to decide which services will be covered….

            Haskins continues with his explanation for why health insurance companies are not death panels simply because they make business decisions about what services to cover. He then gives the former economics major a lesson in the free market system or democracy.

In a true market-based system, if my health insurance company were to refuse to offer me a plan covering all of the services I’m most concerned about, I could simply go to another health insurer who would. If enough people want a particular health service covered, insurers would surely offer it. That’s how markets work….

            Ocasio-Cortez, as an economics major, should know about the basic laws of supply and demand, but she does not seem to understand them. Ocasio-Cortez is one more reason why Americans need to become well-informed because she is definitely not.