In a headline on a McClatchy Newspapers article, we spotted another reason why the federal government should not be dictating Americans’ health care: “Workers often ignore preventive-care benefits,” the headline read. The story said that despite a “wellness” push by large corporations over the past few years, a study found that many of their employees do not choose to make use of wellness benefits.
So why is that a warning against the government health care takeover through ObamaCare socialized medicine?
Well, what employers and insurers had been offering voluntarily, ObamaCare is now requiring them to provide. They now must “fully cover preventive services for workers,” McClatchy reported. That includes things such as “free” vaccines, flu shots and screenings.
“(B)ut that won’t solve the problem of getting people to use the services,” the article added.
And that is exactly the problem. In a genuinely free market, a company that discovers that the preventive care benefits it offers are going unused by lots of employees could drop or at least modify the benefits to make more efficient use of its resources.
But under ObamaCare, a company won’t have the option to stop squandering money on those benefits merely because its workers do not want them. That is a recipe for costly, job-killing inefficiency.
It remains to be seen how many billions of dollars will ultimately be wasted as companies are forced to pay for benefits that may go largely unused.
That is one-size-fits-all government at its worst.