Folks, the Deplorables are blaming the government's response to Hurricane Katrina on Obama, who was the Junior Senator from Illinois in 2005. So, it's only right (in their eyes, at least) they should blame this on him too.
I have said this for quite some time: Selling health insurance across state lines is not a good thing.
We have a very good and very relevant example of what happens when you allow something like this: the credit card industry. Federal law says when a federally-chartered bank in one state makes a loan to a borrower in another state, the laws of the state the bank is in control the loan.
How we got in the trouble we are in now is because, many years ago, South Dakota's usury rate was killing the state. They had a really low one, and the LIBOR* was higher than the usury rate. The banks couldn't afford to make loans because they would have to pay more to borrow the money they were loaning to you than they could legally charge you to rent it.
If one of us were governor of South Dakota at the time, we would have written a usury rate that would be fair to everyone: for non-credit card debt, LIBOR plus 2 percent as of 9am on the day the loan is granted, and for credit cards, LIBOR plus 4 percent as of 9am on the first business day of the month, and that rate holds until the first business day of the next month. Instead, the credit card companies got the governor's ear: revoke your usury rate and we'll move the entire credit card industry to South Dakota. He did and they did, and now we're all getting done.
(Elect me president in 2020, and I will create a national usury rate. It would be completely constitutional because credit cards are now an article of interstate commerce. I will also work to get rid of the four things that are most damaging America: the House and Senate Democratic and Republican Caucuses.)
So let's apply this to health insurance. Why, you may ask, do insurers in different states charge different rates? The answer is as plain as the orange nose on Donald Trump's face: because people in different states require different amounts of healthcare. We will pick two states out of a hat: Hawaii and West Virginia. One of the few things that's cheaper in Hawaii than the rest of the country is health insurance, and for good reason: Hawaiians have very healthy lifestyles. They eat lots of fruits, vegetables and rice and a relatively low amount of saturated fats, they don't smoke much, their leisure activities are mostly outdoors, their industry is farming and the weather is beautiful. All tolled, a recipe for a healthy life. West Virginia is different in almost every way: they eat like shit, their weather sucks, their industry is coal mining and they're born with a lit cigarette in their hand. The people in WV look at Hawaiian insurance rates and think, "how nice it would be to pay Hawaiian insurance rates!" Problem is, if West Virginians paid Hawaiian insurance rates, but kept getting sick at West Virginia rates, the insurers would go broke tout suite. Insurance companies aren't stupid. They know if it's legal to BUY health insurance across state lines it's also legal to SELL it that way, and every health insurer in the country would haul ass for West Virginia.
* The London Interbank Offered Rate is the rate banks pay to borrow money from other banks.
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