The indispensable Jake Tapper of ABC News took an interview with Vice President Joe “Foot in Mouth” Biden that contains a nugget of information that tends to prove that Barack Obama intends to destroy America’s insurance industry and place it under the full control of the federal government.

Tapper asked VP Biden what he’d been hearing from the members of the Democrat Congress that are vulnerable over this healthcare debate and Biden’s reply let slip the administrations ultimate goal; full government control of the insurance industry. (My bold)

BIDEN: Well, I yes. Some of them I say they say, well, Joe, look, man, I mean, you know, you guys haven’t massaged this very well. And, you know, this thing has gone on so long, I don’t know. And my response is, hey, man, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m telling you, you know, pre-existing, they’re going to be covered. You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.

Granted Joe Biden is the court jester of the Obama Administration. He is a fool of the highest order. It would be easy to dismisshis words. However, the idea that Obama wants to take full federal control of the insurance industry fits quite nicely with Obama’s claims as a candidate — that he was for a single payer plan all along.

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With much of the health care reform debate still focused on the wisdom of including a government-run, “public” health insurance “option,” too many of us are neglecting a far more insidious feature of the Democratic proposals:  the mandatory purchase requirement.  Under each of the bills moving through Congress, every person living in the United States would be required by law to have health insurance.  And, if your employer doesn’t provide you with it, you’ve got to buy it yourself or pay a monetary penalty.

What’s more, the proposals would make it more difficult to get some of the options that are available now — particularly the low-cost insurance plans that cover only catastrophic health events and have substantial cost-sharing features.  And, depending on which bill would eventually be enacted into law, Congress, state insurance commissioners, and/or a federal Health Choices Commissioner would get to dictate what benefits have to be covered in every policy, and would be empowered to determine whether any given plan even qualifies as health insurance.  The end result will be considerably higher costs for almost every person living in the country.

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