A Guest Post by Darwin about Clay's Law

(Note from Rachel: Yesterday Clay's Law or HB 43--which would mandate insurance coverage for children with autism--passed through committee with a vote of 5 for it and 1 against. It would cover children 0-9 at $50K and children 9-17 at $25K (YAY!). It is now going to be debated on the floor and put up for a vote.)

What Are the Proper Roles of Insurance and Governments for Free People, and How Do They Relate to Clay's Law?

What is the proper role of insurance?

Insurance's role is to allow people to pay a reasonable amount on a regular basis and then receive money for their needed medical expenses. Since insurance has a price tag to it, in addition to what is paid out at the time of service by the insurer and insured, it is most important for those expenses to cover basic quality of life issues and those that cost so much that the people who are affected by them could not or would be very hard pressed to pay for them entirely out-of-pocket.

Clay's Law makes it so insurance does what it is supposed to do--pay for a needed medical expense to maintain a basic quality of life with a minimal affect on regular insurance payments. Clay's Law does have an expense, but all treatments do. No one would buy insurance if it were almost free, but didn't cover anything. Insurance does mean you will have to share in expenses that affect other people. (Everyone shares in the costs for diabetics, high blood pressure, cancer, obesity, etc.) If someone only wants to pay for their own medical expenses, then they can avoid buying insurance and pay the doctors directly. It is a risk you can take. And it might pay off. Maybe you will have fewer dollars spent on medical treatments than you would have spent on insurance and copayments, etc. (Hopefully those who do not have insurance, have a lot of money in case unforeseen expenses occur.) For the rest of us there is insurance. It is there to mitigate risk.

What is the proper role of a government in maintaining a free people?

A government that maintains a free people is one where the government avoids being an Anarchy or a Tyranny, and disallowing their widespread existence.

Tyranny-Where the strong crush the weak. Anarchy--Where the weak band together and crush the strong.

Instead the government should seek to be just and equitable, and oversee businesses and the general population ensuring are not acting in anarchical or tyrannical fashions which will spread between the government, business or general population and then oscillate between tryanny and anarchy.

How does this relate to Clay's Law?

Clay's Law acts to remove a tyrannical clause from the insurance contract (as many of the children with autism have parents who pay for insurance), where the powerful insurance companies are crushing the weak autistic children, and replace it with a just and equitable clause where both the children and the companies can survive for now and into the future. The insurance companies should have done this on their own, but since they have failed to, the government needs to step in and pass Clay's Law for the maintenance of a free people.

(Rachel Again: If you are so inclined, a phone call or email to your State Representative or Senator would be great. For those in the ward, our state senator is the one who sponsored this bill, and our representative is Kenneth Sumsion.)