Yesterday's appearance in Des Moines by President Obama served as the howling dog prophesying the latest death blow inflicted on the Hawkeye State by the Labor/socialist/Democrat agenda. Today, Principal Financial Group publicly confirmed what many in Des Moines have long feared and sold its entire medical insurance product line. PFG's move is only the latest contraction in the national medical insurance economy, but its the first to really hammer Des Moines.
Approximately one thousand five hundred residents of greater Des Moines just had their jobs eliminated. Some may obtain employment with United Health Care after a short period of concern. Others will find still different future employment.
Where will the sixty year old man with prostate cancer secure employment? Where will 26 year old single mother of two or three children find a job in this economy? The answers to such questions are surely less than comforting to any who ask them. As bad as is the sudden twenty percent reduction in PFG's Iowa work force for the Des Moines economy, PFG's decision afflicts the entire collective "Iowa" with economic cost and social uncertainty.
Losing a major insurance provider means less competition and correspondingly higher prices for medical insurance for every person and business in Iowa. Higher medical insurance costs mean, of course, more employers eliminating insurance benefits for employees or increasing the employee share of the employers cost.
For those of good fortune who retain insurance, albeit at a higher cost, the loss of PFG's medical insurance products simply means less disposable income with which to grow those facets of Iowa's economy unrelated to health care. For the unfortunates who cannot obtain employment it means an expensive ride for everyone on a government funded welfare insurance program.
More people on government health care with greater costs to everyone else? If that sounds like exactly what we conservatives said would happen if Obamacare passed then you were listening, and not just to us. This sort of incrementalism is precisely the creeping socialism Tom Harkin promised as he celebrated the current iteration of Obamacare.
Bahamas Tommy's not on the ballot on November 2 but another Obamacare supporter, Congressman Leonard Boswell, is. In case you were wondering how to cast that Third District Congressional vote just remember who killed fifteen hundred jobs in Des Moines as surely as if he handed out the pink slips in person and, to paraphrase George C. Scott as George S. Patton, you'll know what to do.
1 comment:
So where is the proof about the connection between this news and the new health care bill?
If you don't happen to know, the bill completely relies on private insurance companies like Principal and United Healthcare (to my great dismay), providing them with tens of millions new customers in the coming years. If nothing else, the new health law should have given Principal's health biz more long term value.
Relying on your reporting here, this appears to be a transaction between two private companies. I used to have Principal health insurance a few years back, and they really didn't offer a very good plan or service. Could their incompetence relatively to others possibly be a reason for them leaving the market?
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