Today’s Mises memo was a decent read. Although it will not be relevant to today’s UES discussion of drug legalization, I thought it might be interesting to look at. Hoppe lists a ton of insurance perversions created, he proposes, by state regulation. Here are some of a few:
# In 49 states, insurance companies are forced to cover treatment against alcoholism, which is obviously something that can be individually affected (or even if we say it cannot be individually effected, we would have to say it does not affect all people in the same way). Nonetheless all insurance companies must offer insurance against alcoholism.
# In 27 states, they must cover treatment against drug addiction. In other words, people who know that they will never use any addictive drugs nonetheless have to pay through their premiums for people who do make use of and are affected by this particular risk.
# The coverage of chiropractors is mandatory in 45 states.
# Georgia requires coverage for heart transplants. Now again, heart transplants might certainly be a risk that can be insured against, but it should be perfectly clear that this risk is different for different groups. Some people have a genetic predisposition to heart disease and others don’t. You cannot opt out of this type of coverage. You get it whether you are affected by it or not and you have to pay whether you are affected or not.
# In Illinois, liver transplants have to be included. In Minnesota, hairpieces have to be included. Again it should be pretty clear that different families have different risks of hair loss.
# Marriage counseling has to be included in California. Pastoral counseling in Vermont,
# And (very nice) sperm banking in Massachusetts. (If you were to have predicted a state where that had to be covered, Massachusetts would of course have come up pretty soon, I’m sure about that.)
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