Dave:
I’m highlighting in red what I think
is unacceptable creeping (and often galloping) socialism in your
proposed
system. Herb A
Healthcare System for All Americans David Emil Henderson
Among
the vast array of United States healthcare statistics, it appears we
are
spending $3.207 trillion dollars a year on a population of 321.4
million, or an
average of $10,000 a year per person. It is no wonder we’re having a
raging
political fight over this nightmare, with all our lives at stake
whether we
realize it or not. (The realization came to my family in 2001, when my
wife and
I were slugged with $180,000 in unpaid medical expenses, despite
membership in
a nationwide self-employed association claiming 200,000 members and
“the best
insurance out there.”) The
hodgepodge of problems would vanish if we cut healthcare costs in half,
like
other nations. Our national average would be about $4992 a year. And that could be financed on a sliding scale of
income percentages,
so that everyone could afford proper care. Upon that kind of
platform,
free enterprise could promote solid advances, driving America back on
top where
it belongs. Motivated
by that $180,000 bill, from 47 separate medical accounts, I devoted 5
years to
insurance company litigation and compiled 20 years of research toward a
better
system. Let’s
begin by looking back. That’s important. In
the beginning, our nation’s Founders boldly proclaimed Equality for all
citizens, “Endowed by our Creator with Unalienable Rights to Life,
Liberty, and
the Pursuit of Happiness.” They emphatically declared those rights are
“self-evident” — beyond doubt, beyond debate. Upon that basis, they
wrote the
Constitution for a more perfect Union. Yet
here we are, more than 240 years as a nation, failing to uphold
the most fundamental of those rights — absolute access to the
healthcare
necessities upon which everything else depends. Although healthcare was
much
simpler then, this essential right was clearly intended for every
citizen
without any disdain for age or gender, or skills or occupation, or
location or
beliefs, or stature or solvency, or any birth conditions. This is
NOT what the framers intended by equality. What you
propose is the exact opposite of “Free to persue life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.”
What you propose removes freedom and replaces it with extraction of
property by
force. Whatever
happened to that idea? It
never existed. In
a society so heavily engaged in all forms of competition, the debates
on healthcare have revealed a significant amount of selfishness. Some
of us dispute our collective
responsibility to
establish medical access on the basis of need rather
than privilege. Yes,
and very strongly! Citizens should
have no legal
responsibility for anyone but their own welfare and happiness. This is
the
underpinning of America. I say “should” only because we’ve already had
immense
creeping socialism which has degraded everyone’s quality of life. Some
of us would rather let victims suffer and die prematurely, because we
want to
blame their afflictions on their own negligence rather than other
probable
causes. This is
absolutely not true. We care, and our top priority
is that people attain true happiness by knowing they take
responsibility for
their lives. Extreme cases you have in mind are taken care of by
charity – no one
has an inherent right to any material equality. Many
of us succumb to fears — often advanced by insurance providers — that
healthcare facilities would collapse under the load if everyone becomes
eligible
for treatment. That’s a powerful scare tactic (despite experiences of
other
modern nations which have shown the fear is without
foundation). No,
that’s a fact of life and always has been. And no other
nation has been able to repeal the law of supply and demand by
declaring it
invalid for healthcare (or anything else). As
a cosmic eccentricity, our nation celebrates “heroes” who risk
their lives to save others; but we tolerate insurance institutions that
exclude
lifesaving healthcare from millions of citizens who fall on the wrong
side of
the profit margins. To persuade us to go along with such ugly
discrimination,
insurers have spent huge sums, such as $3.7 billion in lobbying the
Affordable
Care Act (“Obamacare”) plus an additional $709 million in political
campaign
contributions to Republicans and Democrats (according to National
Nurses
United). And needless to say, those billions are drawn from
policyholder premiums. Years
ago, the U.S. healthcare system was considered the world’s best. Now it
has
been ranked in several studies (by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public
Health, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund) as ranking
last
among 11 countries on measures of access, equity, quality, efficiency,
and
healthy lives; and 50th of 55 nations (in 2014, before Obamacare took
effect)
in life expectancy, healthcare spending per capita, and relative
spending as a
share of gross domestic product. Only Jordan, Colombia, Azerbaijan,
Brazil, and
Russia ranked lower, while Hong Kong and Singapore won the top of the
list. Our
slide in ranking has gone hand in hand with the
increased interference by government in healthcare. Furthermore,
our costs keep rising. In a September 16, 2009 speculative article in
TIME
Magazine’s business section, a typical 22-year-old single employee of a
corporation who gets married, has two children, retires at age 65 and
dies at
80 will spend $4 million on healthcare. And you
want him to spend even more by guaranteeing
healthcare for everyone. Obviously,
of all the money we spend on health insurance, only some of it pays the
medical
bills. And we have drifted a long way from the golden dreams of our
Founders. I’ll
say we have – government has gone far beyond the powers granted
by in the Constitution. Is
there any cure for this affliction? Yes. Yes,
return to the Constitution and the specific powers it grants,
which are few but crucial and have nothing to do with the material
equality you
envision. It
boils down to money, which our current system has wasted enormously in
recent
decades. Prior to World War II, doctors and hospitals believed “do no
harm”
meant financially as well as physically. Some doctors reportedly
accepted chickens
or vegetables in lieu of cash during farmhouse calls. (Anyone remember
when
doctors made house calls?) Amen on
the waste – get government our of it. In
those years of the Twentieth Century, doctors and hospitals were still
in
charge of healthcare, vis-à-vis insurance companies, deciding which
insurers
would be accredited. The power began to shift during World War II, when
the
U.S. government set “wage and price controls” to inhibit economic
inflation.
The war also created a manpower shortage; so when companies needed
non-wage
incentives to recruit factory workers, they offered group health
insurance. No,
it’s really hospitals and other healthcare establishments
who have subverted the system to send money their way. Company-sponsored
health insurance remained a good deal until the Cold War chilled out.
Whether
it was subsequent “peace dividend” economics or plain old greed,
corporate
investors began demanding higher profits via cost reductions.
Shareholders
became more important to CEOs than employees and customers. Customer
service
people were replaced by robotic voice machines, while employees were
expected
to work longer hours for stagnant wages while paying more for their
insurance.
According to that 2009 Time magazine article, the average cost of
family health
insurance offered by employers reached $13,375 a year, an increase of
131
percent over the prior decade. For comparison, overall inflation rose
only 28
percent. This is
largely anti-capitalist bullshit. |