If the Administration’s order for a rate-hiking insurance company to “immediately rescind the rates, issue refunds to consumers or publicly explain their refusal to do so” (per the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius’s “wielding power granted by the new health care law”) doesn’t trouble you greatly, you’ve been drinking the Kool Aid quite heavily my friend…

Here’s Trustmark’s (the “greedy” insurer in question) response: “We respectfully disagree with the assumptions and conclusions drawn today by the Department of Health and Human Services. Our premiums are driven by the rising cost and increased utilization of medical services. In essence, our pricing is the result of claims experience and the marketplace (competition)… It is imperative therefore, in the interest of our owners, employees and customers, that we, an American corporation, maintain the freedom to set premiums accordingly. And the Administration, by the way, is utterly clueless when it comes to pricing medical insurance… And besides, it’s none of your friggin business…” Now doesn’t that warm your free-market heart? Of course, alas, I made up everything after “medical services”…

Think about it folks; Kool-Aid-drunk or not, you gotta agree that government is in no position to direct the pricing of any service or commodity… And suffice it to say that, when it does, it entirely distorts the marketplace: Producers recede in number (think low-income housing… think Dodd Frank and smaller banks) and the consumer ends up with fewer choices, lower quality and, ultimately, higher prices…