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Dan
Calabrese
Read Dan's bio and previous columns here
August 20, 2009
On Health Care,
Everyone Spews Nonsense
The path to terrible legislation is usually strewn with widespread
belief in things that just aren’t so. The more such misconceptions float
around in the public arena, the worse the legislation is likely to be.
President Obama’s push for health care reform – or “health insurance
reform” as he’s now taken to calling it – is liable to end up as one of
the most horrible pieces of legislation in the history of this country,
and that’s caused in large part by the fact that almost everyone
involved in the debate is running around thinking and saying complete
nonsense.
Let us spare no one:
Republicans.
I guess it’s because Republicans are supposed to love everything in the
private sector, as this is part and parcel to the loathing of all things
government, but why do Republicans keep complaining that ObamaCare will
destroy private health insurance?
Private health insurance is a disaster, and if it helps Republicans to
see the truth about it, they should know that it is largely a
government-created disaster. Born of tax laws that incentivize people to
rely on generous benefits bankrolled by their employers, private health
insurance removes the economic rationality from health care purchasing
decisions by making everything seem free. As
former Reagan economic advisor Martin Feldstein points out in
yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, it is far from free. It is
tax-free to your employer, but not free for you, because much of your
compensation package is re-directed into insurance premiums.
You are being charged handsomely in advance for benefits you may or may
not use, when you could be using your own cash to make more affordable
and rational choices about what to insure against, and what to save for
and pay for out of your own pocket. The government takes that choice
away from you by taxing your employer on any expense other than this
one. As a result, overall health care spending balloons, since you
approve anything your doctor wants to do, regardless of cost, and a
bloated bureaucracy is employed to process the payments.
Why do Republicans defend this? It is a bureaucratic clusterfark. Do
Republicans love bureaucratic clusterfarks as long as they happen to
live in the private sector?
The Media.
Along the same lines, the mainstream media continue to repeat a hugely
misleading notion that is fueling this entire debate – the notion that
50 million people lack access to health care. Balderdash. At any given
moment, some 50 million people may not be under the coverage of a
health insurance plan like that described above. That doesn’t mean they
“lack access to health care.” Some are uninsured very temporarily
because they are between jobs. Some choose not to buy insurance because
they have enough money to cover a health emergency – even a very
expensive one – if they need to. Some don’t have that money but are
choosing to take the risk anyway. Only a small percentage of this 50
million are chronically uninsured, and even they don’t “lack access to
health care.” If any one of them goes to an emergency room, the ER
personnel on staff are required by law to treat them, regardless of
their ability to pay.
Now, that doesn’t mean this is an ideal situation. You don’t want people
going to the ER for the sniffles, and it adds cost and inefficiency to
the system when this happens. But they do have access to health care,
and it’s simply a falsehood to say that they don’t. This is like when
the media calls people “homeless” when they are, in fact, staying with
friends after their house burns down. It’s not an ideal situation, but
they’re not freaking homeless.
The President.
Of all the misleading statements the president keeps making, the worst
is that those who oppose his plan are “defending the status quo.” Even
granting that idiot Republicans are decrying the potential demise of
private insurance, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the existing
system. Many market-oriented thinkers have recognized for years that
American health care could use reforms that wring waste out of the
system and return economic rationality to the decisions people make
about health care.
If
you ask just about anyone what the health care system should be
like, almost no one will say, “Exactly as it is.” We all have ideas for
how to improve it. There are no defenders of the status quo. When
President Obama uses this term, as he does often, he is attempting to
mislead people into thinking there are only two choices – a
private-sector-based clusterfark or a government-run clusterfark. The
implication is that the government-run clusterfark will at least be more
benevolent and fair. (Oh, and free.) Let the president also toss out
canards like that of doctors unnecessarily removing your tonsils to
score more cash, and it becomes clear he knows almost nothing about how
health care works, and he hopes you will be just as ignorant.
The more this debate goes on, the more the public’s collective mind is
filled with misinformation and ill-conceived notions. Keep listening and
feel yourself getting stupider.
If
this isn’t a recipe for a legislative disaster of epic proportions, I
don’t know what is.
© 2009 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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