Let's say I'm a really busy guy. So I hire a service to pick up my lunch orders every day. I call the order in, the service pays for it, and they deliver it to my desk.
To keep it from becoming a bookkeeping nightmare, the service and I agree on a daily flat fee that is intended to cover the cost of the meal, the cost to transport it from the restaurant to my desk, and some margin of profit. Based on this fee, the service gives me guidelines of what will and will not be covered in terms of restaurants, meal types, timeframe, etc. The service and I have a good working relationship within those parameters.
Now imagine that a regulatory agency decided that we need to enact legislation to mandate what lunch delivery services must provide. Suddenly, where I had been getting food from Arby's and Chili's around the corner, my service now has to offer everyone food from more expensive and more distant restaurants.
What happens? They have to raise their rates to cover the new requirements. The problem is, I'm happy with the old service. I don't want to pay more - I just want my old plan. But now the old plan is not available. The old plan is illegal.
Or maybe they couldn't raise their rates, because the new legislation has a requirement for what they are allowed to charge for the new minimum plan. So my service, not wanting to close up shop and put all their employees out of work, decides to pursue customers who are less likely to use the more expensive services.
If they are successful in targeting people like me, who statistically cost them less money, they can stay afloat, but that means they're making a huge profit margin on less demanding customers while losing money on the more expensive clients. People like me figure out this disparity and decide it's not worth having a service after all. We leave en masse, tipping the scales away from profitability and into bankruptcy.
The government pays billions to bail out all the failing lunch delivery services without addressing any of the underlying issues, thus prolonging the problem while buying dependency from a once-thriving industry.
I prefer choice and competition in my medical insurance plans, not a one-size-fits-all approach to "protect" me.
Wait, did I say insurance? You know I meant lunch delivery services.
• Benjamin Linn is a Carson City resident.