Firstly, I’d like to apologize for the length of this post. Several days ago, I wrote an article (Health Care Bared) regarding the health care bill being discussed all over the country. Yes, one more voice added to all the others. Only one person took the time to express their disagreement with me, so I wanted to respond to that disagreement.
In that first post, I recommended that people not get caught up in the details of the proposed House Bill and to pay attention to five key points which are listed below in bold blue text. The response to each point is listed below in red, and finally my answer is listed in the standard font color.
Please take the time to read through what has been written and consider the points yourself.
Point 1: Our federal government has never run a program within budget. There were huge opponents to the Medicare and Social Security Programs back when they were first established. What we see now with the fiscal crisis of those programs is validation that the government should never have created the programs in the first place. Our government’s solution is not to shut those programs down and find a way to pay off those who have invested into the system. Instead, they want to overhaul the health care industry as a whole. They don’t want to just perpetuate what has failed miserably, they want to quadruple the failure.
Response: I think medicare and SS have done good for this country. I wouldn’t say they should have never been made. Complete overhaul of health care does suck, but it seems that at this point it needs to be done. Fixing it back in, say, the 90′s would have been good. Shame that didn’t work out when it was tried. Basically, it might be best to blow the dam and rebuild anew, cause we aint’ got enough fingers to plug all these holes.
Answer: This response fails to address the point, which is that the government has failed to run any of these programs with any sort of financial responsibility. Medicare and SS have not done nearly enough good for the amount of money we’ve paid into the system.
Point 2: Our federal government has failed to provide good service in just about every entitlement program they’ve established. Doctors can’t get the funds they need from Medicare. Patients can’t get the health care they need from the VA. It is a truth that in spite of 40+ years in our war on poverty, the poor are still poor. Expecting government to be successful this time around defies belief.
Response: So the war on poverty hasn’t been won. Neither has the war on drugs, nor the war on terror. Gotta keep fighting the good fight though. The government provides a service to people who without it would have no other options. Yes, that one choice can usually be run better, but at least it’s there. At least there are programs that ensure some baseline quality of life for those in need.
Answer: But it’s not a “good fight”, at all. You can’t claim to be doing good, by forcing people against their will to do what you believe is “good”. Additionally, the language in this response is misleading, “can usually be run better”. It blurs the truth. The truth is that it’s “not being run well by any measurement”. In fact, one could say that it does more harm than good by creating a dependent state that remains poor instead of inspiring those who are poor to elevate themselves; creating generations living together in households proud of how they’re “bilking” the government while doing nothing to improve their situations.
More importantly, the point here is being ignored. Why expect the government to be successful at it’s proposed job, when we have examples, even government-run health care examples, that they cannot be successful at it?
Further, while I think it’s apples and oranges and quite tangential: I think it’s quite arguable that the War on Terror is being won, but I’ll agree with you about the War on Drugs. The latter is a war I’m not convinced we should be fighting.
Point 3: Consider every other country with nationalized health care. With the exception of a few Scandinavian countries, where they do fairly well with socialism because of high revenues from the sale of national resources, no socialistic medicine anywhere in the world works very well. It’s hubris to think we can do better, especially in light of #2 above.
Reponse Every European I know, many who have dual citizenship between their respective country and the US, all agree that the universal health care they receive is much better than the system in place in the US. By no means is it the end-all-be-all, but it’s functional and covers more people while costing the country less overall. I think it’s worth trying.
What really should be done though, is universal health care should come from the Defense budget. Defend our citizens from preventable death and disease! Fight the Axis of Infirmities! Death to the Infections!
Answer: This response is the most valid of all. Truth be told, it’s very hard to comparitively gauge the health care of different countries. It’s true that the health care system of other countries doesn’t work well, but neither does the US. Additionally, but on a “bang for buck” point-of-view, it could certainly be argued that other countries have it better. But I emphasize “argued”, because it could be equally argued that we have better quality of life and/or general health care as a result of the money we spend. Unfortunately, the non-anecdotal studies that have been done are few and of those few, the most famous WHO study is highly biased and factor-exclusive in it’s methodology. Comparisons of life-expectancy and infant mortality are based on non-standard measurements across different countries and the higher value of the latter leads, necessarily, to a lower value of the former. Additionally, the issue of infant mortality rates also seem to be directly related to low newborn birth weights, which is puzzling to all who study the issue. As there are other methods of fixing the health insurance system (not the health care system) in this country, little unbiased data to support either side, and long in-depth argumentation involved, I would call this a push.
However, understand that while there is a great deal of discussion to be had concerning the comparability of the US health care versus other developed countries, even in vague terms it is comparable. What can’t be compared is that the greatest cost to our country (private or public combined) is the amount of money spent on health care for the elderly. We spend more money per capita on health care for the elderly and as such we have diminishing returns. The only way the government can truly become fiscally responsible is by rationing care to the elderly or taxing the healthy more heavily. Hence, the point I made elsewhere about quadrupling the failed Medicare program.
Exception must be taken to one thing said here, however, “I think it’s worth trying.” This is extraordinarily important. The words are saying, “It’s worth the experiment.” You must understand, if we go down this road, we’ll never go back. Programs of this sort become so systemic and far-reaching, they’re an economic and governmental cancer. They can’t be removed. Plus, governments never relinquish power, they only grab more. This is an experiment with dire consequences!
Finally, the issue about drawing from the Defense budget is once again tangential and in no way speaks to the point. However, I’m surprised at how many people who support the President’s stimulus plan also speak out against the defense budget. Is it not just another form of stimulus and at the very least meant to protect our freedom and lives? Even if it is argued that the military is sometimes used in less than desirable ways, there’s no question it should exist to protect our citizens, even if it must just be used more correctly.
Point 4: It gives the government too much power. They already have far far too much. Consider the fact that they raise taxes on alcohol and tobacco (much more on tobacco, because it’s an acceptable demon), simply based upon their perceived costs to the health care industry (Medicaid/Medicare). Whenever the government gets power, it wants to control and regulate. This point leads to a very long conversation, but one that every person should have at some point.
Response: Too much power… yeah, I see your point. Unfortunately, they’re gonna tax the crap out of tobacco regardless of what happens though.
Answer: The flippant response notwithstanding, this is one of the most important points. And it’s the one I stand on repeatedly: we must have our liberty. Every new entitlement program enacted by the government takes more of our liberty away from us. Forget the tobacco and consider every other parental-based regulation the government has decided and will decide to enact, couched in ethical rhetoric that it must be done due to their “responsibility” to the tax-payer!
Point 5: There are solutions to the Health Insurance Problem, but they involve removing government regulations, not adding to them. They involve greater competition among health insurance carriers by removing restrictions among the states on that health care. They involve allowing people to choose to insure themselves solely against catastrophic health care costs, not against regular check-up and maintenance which sucks so much out of the system.
Response: Yeah, deregulation of wall street over the past 8 years worked out great. (I’m not actually gonna try to argue this point that way, just a fun quip.)
Answer: This is an important point to be understood and considered, though. There are free market solutions that can and do work. It’s the current government mandates and existing entitlement programs that limit the ability of insurance companies to compete to bring costs down to an acceptable minimum and that prevent individuals from purchasing the catastrophic health care insurance they could easily opt into. Let me make the analogy more clearly. I don’t insure my car for oil changes and tire changes. I insure my car against accidents that would financially devastate me. That’s the whole point of insurance and how it first got it’s roots: to allay financial risk. It has grown into a state where people depend upon it for the smallest of medical problems directly as a result of government meddling. The contemporary view of health insurance, applied to a car, would mean that if I needed a wiper blade, I would go to the mechanic and pay a co-payment for the blade and installation of the blade, and then the mechanic would bill my insurance company a couple of hundred dollars to be reimbursed about 75% of that. Or I could just use a bandaid and do it myself.
Conclusion: In all, if the government were a corporation, they would be out of business with the points I’ve listed above (1 – 4). But instead they’re able to set the cost of their products/services (not the free market), eliminate the competition (by pushing an overpowered federal government and emasculated state government), and with the threat of physical force, their “customers” are required to purchase their products/services (police-backed tax collection).
Response: As for the government as a corporation eliminating the competition… There’s an underlying question that needs to be answered. Do you believe there’s even a market in what social services cover, and if there is, at what point is it profitable (will the breadth of that service really be comparable to what the government offers?) I think the government, by not having a goal of profitability, can do better (for those in need, not shareholders) than what the free market would offer.
Anyway, it’s not like the government is killing other options. It’s just providing one more. Like how the post office is with UPS/Fedex/DHL. If there wasn’t a post office and UPS had to deal with all the baseline mail, it would suck too, and it would cost a buttload more.
Without question there’s a market for retirement services/investments. It already exists and is in use by millions of people. The most well-known is your standard 401k plan. The problem here is the mismanagement that exists in Social Security and the mandatory nature of it. We are required to take care of our retirement through the federal government. We are required to work and invest that money for our future. Why? Because people don’t want to have to tell us “no” when we come begging at the age of 85 for a little help. Accountability is no longer required of us, instead we are no better than children being told to save our allowance by putting it into the government’s “piggy bank” which they then raid to fund the household expenses with the promise that they’ll put it back in a few years (which they never do, they just keep on raiding). And while no one could live on the meager benefits they get from Social Security anyway: the age of benefit keeps rising, the payout keeps diminishing.
And if you believe the government is not incrementally working towards complete governmental control of the health care industry, listen to Barak Obama’s words on the subject:
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”, 2003 to the AFL-CIO.
“Here’s the bottom line. If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system…But we’re not designing a system from scratch…And when we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices….Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered…I don’t want to wait for that perfect system…The one thing you should ask about the candidates though is who’s gonna have the capacity to actually deliver on the change?…I believe I’ve got a better capacity to break the gridlock and attract both Independents and Republicans to work.”, campaigning in Iowa.
The idea that he’s going to let you keep your plan if you’re happy with it and just provide “another option” sounds laudable on the surface. And to that end, what you say is true. That is the plan. But you obviously haven’t read the bill. I, on the other hand, have read several parts of it. Including where it talks about commissioning a study after the program has been in place for a few years to find out how to de-incentivise people from being a part of private health care plans. With the full power and resource of the government, the plan intends to squeeze out private health plans with the public “option”. You’re right. As long as the government doesn’t need to make a profit, it can do better for the people. It can go into debt if it needs to (at least until all the competition is dead). But it’s unsustainable. We have a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit this year alone!!!!! Add that to the debt and you tell me, do we really really want this?
There are so many good reasons to say, “no”. There are other paths we can take. Why then do we insist on saying, “yes”, to this massive and permanent “experiment” in overhauling health care and giving it to the government when it never successfully runs anything? Ronald Reagan once said (actually, he said it on multiple occasions), “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
