Recently, my state representative went off the deep end.

Addressing the Legislature, Rep. Lance Harvell, R-Farmington, wondered why should his “20-year-old son have to get a mandate for insurance that would require him to have a Pap smear?” Lance railed against “insurance for autistic children” and suggested that Mainers older than 46 “lack good health.”

He said, “One of the reasons they don’t have health insurance, the youth of this country, is because they’re having to pay for everyone else’s bad health.”

In reality, young people lack health care because many jobs nowadays offer no benefits. Even if they find a decent job, after student loans, housing and food nothing is left to fund the uncontrollable insurance industry.

Harvell’s anger is misplaced. He and his political party need to calm down and take a hard look at the insurance companies that they ardently support.

The Maine Republican Party thinks that government intervention and price oversight is unnecessary in a competitive market and that health insurance premiums are self-regulating.

Recently, Anthem Blue Cross in Maine wanted to increase premium rates by 18.5 percent on its 12,000 individual insurance policies and has been in litigation with the state to get it. In California, Anthem Blue Cross spent $2 million lobbying its Legislature and another $1.6 million on campaign contributions between 2009 and 2010. That’s not competition.

The truth is that Maine’s young people and even those older than age 46 want health insurance, but are priced out of it by an industry more interested in the wellness of shareholders.

Dennis R. Haszko

Farmington

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