Remy: Health Care Mandates vs Pizza Toppings

Internet sensation Remy explains how pizza can tell us a lot about health care mandates.

Written and performed by Remy and produced by Meredith Bragg.

About 2.30 minutes. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get automatic updates when new material goes live.

Follow Reason on Twitter at http://twitter.com/reason

Follow Remy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GoRemy

For a complete playlist of Reason.tv's health care coverage, go here

For more Remy & Reason.tv vids go here

For even more Remy, go to http://youtube.com/goremy

For more information about state by state minimum coverage mandates, visit www.cahi.org

Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Cute. It also shows how costs get out of control by mandating coverage and by requiring people to subsidize other people's coverage needs.

Healthcare is so much the victim of inept government meddling that I can't get over how anyone can take seriously government plans to solve the problem. . .which call for even more inept government meddling!

[MB]

Because some people have got it in their heads that:

a) government can solve everything (as opposed to non-government solutions)

and

b) ONLY government can solve things (again, as opposed to non-government solutions).

[Paul]

People don't go to some exchange and pick and choose futures and options on if their dick suddenly gets cut off, they pick from plans designed by actuaries at insurance firms. Of course no one bothers with something so terribly inefficient as picking and choosing medical specifics so you get the bundled plan that some insurance company made and I doubt the government is making it that much worse with these complex securities.

If the anarcho-capitalist argument is that all trade must be voluntary, then all emergency care is effectively charity and unworthy of being considered trade. You do not have an effective market choice if your entire motivation is duress. If you believe that competition sets a fair market price, patents create a monopoly in which prices are in fact driven up from a reasonable market price where insurance expands their ability to unreasonably inflate prices.

[Matt Tanous]

"You do not have an effective market choice if your entire motivation is duress."

Yes, but emergency care and necessities are not purchased under duress. Urgency != duress.

[Paul]

So you're telling me that in most cases emergency care is simply urgent, it's rarely ever a situation in which there is a threat of serious bodily harm or death. That's why people go to doctors?

[Kwanzaa Cake]

Are you saying the government totally fucked up the health insurance market 9 ways to Sunday, and now the liberals are claiming that the only solution is even more government? It's like they have some crazy plan to expend their power over every aspect of their lives.

[Jeffersonian]

The answer is more leeches, always more leeches.

[Auric Demonocles]

We should mandate that insurance policies cover leeches, too.

[Joe M]

Damn, Texas has 62 mandates? I would've guessed a lot fewer, but I suppose higher population states will have more and larger interest groups tugging the laws this way and that.

I also notice that Washington state was the only one that covered acupuncture, massage therapy, and "naturopathic", all three. Fuckin hippies.

[Matt]

Texas is also one of the most expensive states when it comes to getting health insurance. Coincidence?

[fried pelosi]

Are you serious?!

[OIslander]

Yes-our insurance commissioner here in Washington decided on her own that chiropractic quackery, massage therapy and naturopathic "medicine" be mandatory on all policies... She got reelected.

[Colonel_Angus]

The overall health care political fad that created Obamacare, was frustrating to me because none of the mainstream "sides" even addressed things like this.

[Suthenboy]

The only business government has being involved in health care and insurance is making sure the contracting parties abide by their contractual obligations, and that is best done at the state level.

[MB]

Why, that's just crazy talk right there!!

[mgd]

Why do you hate children and grannies?

[Auric Demonocles]

This should have been the Friday Funny.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Health insurance bennies a la carte? Are you crazy? No one wants to watch the Travel Channel or E! but if you want A&E, ESPN or Comedy Central you have to pay for the other garbage as well.

Wait, I'm thinking of cable.

[Paul]

Market failure!1!!!1

[Joe M]

DON'T TALK SHIT ABOUT TRAVEL.

[Bobarian]

Yeah! You ever seen Man Vs Food?

[Paul]

Re: coverage for Homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture etc.

It's concievable that these things could actually reduce costs--- although it's also possible they'll raise costs.

The argument that they'll raise costs is of course, obvious: we have to pay for one more thing, and a thing that doesn't fucking work.

The argument that they'll lower costs: If dumbasses are willing to spend $20 to have someone stick needles in them, it's a lot cheaper than paying $300 to have someone actually provide real healthcare-- which they probably didn't need in the first place.

[Voros McCracken]

Right. What you'd see is insurance companies voluntarily covering things like that because it's in their interest to do so. That's how the birth control thing spiraled out of control: many insurance companies were covering it happily because they calculated that it was a lot cheaper than paying for a pregnancy.

It would be nice if Ala Carte health care was at least an option for those it makes sense for.

[Bobarian]

But if you get the government to pay for it, you can charge $300 for the shit that doesn't work.

[shrike]

Behindertsein ist sch?n

[?]

Internet sensation Remy

[chortle]

[WWNGD?]

That silly Remy trying to change the world through song... what will the little dickens think of next?

[Hooha]

Wild On E! was worth watching, back when Brooke Burke hosted. Granted, I don't really remember what the show was about...

[David Shellenberger]

The White House, perhaps missing the point, responded by ordering all Americans to buy pizza with a dozen healthy toppings selected by Michelle Obama.

[ClaraW]

Yum! Your pizza looks amazing!