Affordable health insurance is ILLEGAL in many states. The Wall Street Journal, among others, has pointed out how one-thousand-plus mandates in New Jersey balloon the premiums to a figure SIX times as high as Kentucky. Want some health insurance? Gotta buy the gold-plated coverage required by law (hair transplants and all).

Endless government mandates make it illegal to sell affordable health insurance AND mandates also raise health care costs—we all have to pay for insurance that includes such things as infertility treatment. (As the father of two, I don’t need the latter!).

In the late 1980s, I sold health insurance in New England to people who did not have it. Many were self-employed. A young healthy person could buy top-rated major medical for $30/month. That was low enough to encourage my clients to buy. Then, the “progressives” tacked sugar plum mandates onto health insurance and eventually required all companies to take on any one who applied. The result? Costs soared and most private insurance companies withdrew from the state. That made it necessary for the state to create an indemnity pool to cover those without insurance. Guess what? The cost was sky high.

My self-employed brother bought a $30/month policy. Later, he developed two types of cancer, and after the $2,000 maximum out-of-pocket, the insurance company paid everything. Plus his rate did not go up (that’s standard insurance law). But the progressives, concerned about people like him, killed private insurance, his carrier withdrew from the state, and my brother paid ten times as much to the state for its “universal” coverage. That’s the kind of government compassion we could do without. Eventually, my brother figured it was better to work for a large corporation. After all, why create your own business when the government makes it so difficult?

My “progressive” friends argue that it is “nice” to have these things covered in ALL insurance plans. But that’s the one-size-fits-all mentality that got us into this mess. The social democratic goal is universal single payer (government) insurance. They would, if they could. Meanwhile, I’m reminded of the sixties slogan: “the worse, the better”—the worse “progressives” make things in the insurance market (where people have choices), the better their chance at making the “right” choice for us all.

Let’s hope that other states follow Florida’s lead in allowing insurance companies to sell a variety of plans without all the mandates. Yes, it’s “back to the 1980s” and no cure-all, but it is a step in the right direction.