Cable Company, Obamacare, Same Thing

Regarding "A AAAs cable services grow, so do the bills" (Saturday Business), I was struck by several things revealed in the story about the takeover of cable giant Time Warner by Comcast, and how similar this situation is to health care reform as implemented by President Obama. 

 

First is the revelation that "the price paid by consumers for expanded basic cable service has grown at more than twice the rate of inflation annually over the past 17 years."  What a coincidence; that's also the rate of inflation for health care during that same period.

 

Next is the hand-wringing by Comcast, which insisted that "most of the factors affecting the price of cable service are not under its control."  Health insurance companies have been making the same argument for decades, blaming everybody else for the out of control price increases. 

 

Finally comes the rationalization for higher prices: “Where we might have had 100 standard-definition channels in a package more than a decade ago, today you have 250 standard-definition channels, plus 100 channels in high definition.”  In other words, even if the average subscriber only wants 50 channels, they get 350 and must pay for them.  This is exactly the same argument that Obamacare's defenders put forward to justify cancelling the private policies of millions of Americans and forcing them into the higher premiums and deductibles available through the Obamacare Exchanges. 

 

Heavy regulation, little consumer choice, and the federal government picking winners and losers.  The only thing these two scenarios don't have in common is candor: When asked what would happen to Comcast customers after the merger, Executive VP David Cohen had the decency to say "we’re certainly not promising that customer bills are going to go down, or even that they’re going to increase less rapidly."   

 

No proponent of the Affordable Care Act was ever so forthcoming.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX