We are creating our own nanny state and them is us


The photo above in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye this morning and sent me into a tizzy. For the record, I am a bit upset at the direction the health care reform bill is taking. It favors the preservation of the insurance company system by forcing us to buy the same crap that got us into this mess and rewards job-holders (folks who choose security) over entrepreneurs. In short, it is re-establishing a job-based, status-quo economy instead of an entrepreneurial one where innovation and risk produces growth. I am very disappointed at the turn of events.

But the point that is sending me over the edge is the fifth “right” that says you have a right to stay on your parents’ health insurance policy until you are 27 26. I say it here now and when MSNBC starts saying it, you know you heard it here first.

The unintended consequence of this provision is insurance companies will not provide health insurance to anyone under twenty-six who have living parents. But an even worse consequence is the expansion of a parent-sponsored nanny state in our culture as a whole.

A quick conversation with my 24-year old son reveals that most of his friends with freshly-minted college degrees expect to be able to move back with their parents and live there rent-free and guilt-free indefinitely.

The FAFSA will not allow anyone under twenty-four to get financial aid without parents disclosing their financial resources. Despite almost no benefit to the parents, they are expected to pay a large chunk of an inflated tuition bill by leveraging the equity in their homes.

Almost all landlords in college towns will not rent/lease to a student without parents co-signing, even though the students are over eighteen and legally able to enter into a contract AND be sued in a court of law.

And now insurance companies and the Federal Government want to strap parents even more by obligating them to provide for health insurance for their kids until they are 27, nine years after they have legally become an adult.

What they should do is obligate kids to accepting and embracing their adulthood at eighteen. When parents have no legal right to their children, they should also have no corresponding legal responsibility. Either these kids are adults or they are not.

If they are, start treating them like adults. They should have a right to their own health insurance when they turn eighteen, not the obligation to be parasitic for the next nine years. And parents need to start expecting they act like the adults they are, regardless of how painful self-reliance is.