You may have spotted this news in a recent Business section of the Times Free Press: “Chattanooga-based Unum Group has hired Martin McGuinness, former President George W. Bush’s envoy to the House of Representatives, to take over as the insurer’s vice president of government affairs.”
Wow, a member of a U.S. presidential administration will be joining the staff of the local insurance company?
Why is that? Can’t a company just produce a good product, sell it at a price that customers are willing to pay, pay its reasonable share of taxes and “let that be that”?
Unfortunately not.
Our federal government continues to seize greater and greater control over the areas of medical care and insurance – particularly through the ObamaCare socialized medicine law that Democrats in Congress passed earlier this year.
Companies in those fields obviously do not hire well-connected former government officials just for the “prestige” of doing so. They hire them to help protect the businesses from undue, costly and sometimes even suffocating regulation and control by Washington.
It is regrettable that such a thing should be necessary. It ultimately adds to costs that we all pay in one way or another.
But so long as the federal government ignores the boundaries laid down by our Constitution as to where it does and does not have authority, the need for companies to protect themselves from federal dictation will remain.