Because of superior editorial writing. Witness this from “The Week” section of the new August 29, 2005 issue:
Many state governments effectively prohibit people from buying cheap, basic health insurance by imposing all kinds of mandates. They demand that insurance policies cover the cost of hair transplants, or treatment for alcoholism, or chiropractic services. While the health plans of large companies are regulated by the federal government and thus exempt from the state mandates, small businesses and individuals seeking to buy insurance need relief. But what kind of relief? If the federal government nullified the state mandates, then all the interest groups that successfully lobbied state governments to require that insurers cover their services would simply turn their attention to Washington. Rep. John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican, has hit on an elegant solution: The federal government should let individuals buy health insurance from out-of-state providers. The insurance would be regulated by the company’s home state. In effect, people would be shopping for regulatory regimes at the same time they shopped for health insurance. State regulations would be in competition with one another, and any state that imposed too onerous a burden would find that business was going elsewhere. We wish Shadegg’s bill covered small businesses, too. But if the Senate follows the House’s lead in passing the bill, Congress will for once have sensibly exercised its power over interstate commerce – and brought a little more freedom to American health care.
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