"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."
P.J. O'Rourke
Obamacare -- the failure
I believe government must respect the right of the individual -- the common person. The one thing we all have in common is that we are individual. A government which disregards any individual's right is government getting ready to damage all common people, all humanity. The politicians in that government are too interested in their own personal gain; that is, they are corrupt human beings who should be in prison.
Clinton and the Democrats in general practice this type of politics - they are interested in what they can do to advance government control in order to minimize personal freedom we have in common. Naturally, deceit accompanies this. They will tell you things like they are going to look out for you. Don't believe it. They have no clear idea what it is to look out for an individual -- remember what they did to health care.
The spectacular failure that is Obamacare fits the pattern. Obamacare was never designed to serve the public, but rather to serve the interest of the "Democratic" politicians who designed it. Insurance companies now have a guarenteed profit margin (along with Obamacare 'tax incentives' which grant even more profit to insurance companies). Gone is the competition that used to be part of the maximization of the individual.
Naturally, the insurance companies will want this perk to continue, so they will become significant donors the "Democratic" Party, the source of the largesse. And the people will be herded into more confining insurance policies, the fundamental health problems of the country will be ignored, and health care costs will continue up and up.
There is a place for public-pay health care in certain circumstances.
Recovered?
Public pay health care cannot be based on the principle of "compassion." Too often "compassionate" public health care relies on a careless individual suddenly making better health choices. But it is wise for the public to pay for care that has direct public impact. An example is controlling contagion. The power of government is the type of power which could contain and treat victims of an outbreak of influenza, plague, cholera, and other highly contagious, serious disease.
Sickness that is entirely due to personal behavior should not be a public obligation. If I eat too much fat in my diet and have a heart attack, I should pay for it. If you break your leg skiing, then you pay for it. If someone get a disease from ill-advised sexual conduct, that person should pay for it.
Private pay for private sickness has some very positive implications. First, most personal behavior is based on personal choice. Personal freedom is very important. But if that choice is unwise and results in disaster, it becomes a learning experience. The learning is not limited to the person who made the stupid decision, but anyone looking on can see the results, a public good. No smart aleck remarks about fatal learning experiences will be tolerated. Government still can't bring people back to life.
The second point is that assume we allow the public to pay for the results of a privately caused private health disaster. That is effectively a transfer of public resources to a private person. The equivalent idea is: Suppose I decide I must have silver dinnerware, because silver is antiseptic (and it is). I loathe germs, so I get nice dinnerware and enrich myself, and I can get the rest of you to pay for it. Yeah, not likely.
Okay, you say, but wouldn't it do the public good to exercise compassion. Everyone will feel nicer if we do, right? I won't go into the facts about the thousands of private health charities and churches doing this already. If the public government steps in, the problem is in the administration of care.
The "public" decides such matters by delegating the decision making to bureaucrats. That only ensures that poor decisions will be made. People who have little to do with the actual suffering will decide what gets treated and when. The historical fact is government bureaucracies have always been really bad at allocating resources. If the goal is truly the best health care for the most people, most health care should be left in private hands.
Government provided health insurance will be more expensive for the individual than privately provided health care. Health and medicine are complex topics. If you apply the bureaucratic mentality to a complex topic, you always get oversimplification. In health care that means either inadequate funds will be provided for certain procedures, ensuring delays, promising only suffering and death. Or too much oversight will occur, ensuring needed medical treatment will be delayed, promising suffering and death. Or we'll get both, and that's assuming the whole apparatus will be administered fairly and honestly. That will go well with the Fair and Honest Politicians. Cough.
Inevitably, there will be a political test of some sort.... Do you have the means to provide this treatment out of your own pocket? Can you pay for a root canal? A tonsillectomy? An appendectomy? A traffic accident? Maybe bureaucrats and politicians think you can. Therefore, you're rich, too likely to vote for the other side, whatever, the government can delay treatment for you, deny treatment for you, make up new diseases for you.
Make up new diseases for you? Yes, Virginia, this has happened already. Remember during the Clinton administration when the Center for Disease Control claimed that "gun violence" (What's that?) was directly caused by private firearms ownership. Further, "gun violence" was called an epidemic under the Clinton administration (Did it go away? Or were the Clintonistas lying?). The CDC recommended charging itself with ending the "gun violence epidemic," since the CDC had defined "gun violence" as a public health issue. Health control, not gun control.
And back to the bureaucrats for a second. Health control will require control of research funding. From the public policy perspective there would be no sense "wasting" money on non-political disease. Even in genuine research, the people charged with running a health control system will not see all the angles, thus stifling research. Inevitably, the bureaucrats will be presented with some new avenue of research and deny funding. Witness the political drive to fund unpromising research in fetal stem cell research: There are numerous privately funded stem cell research projects going on in more promising adult stem cell research, but a batch of noisy politicians, and their willing accomplices in the Leftist controlled media, raise a stink about their fetal stem cell research not getting enough government funding.
Everything in this argument applies equally well to federal or state controlled health care. If you need examples of this screw up look at England's ineffective system, or Canada's (Many Canadians don't wait to die and come to the US for treatment. This takes a lot of pressure off their system so there are fewer complaints). In a few years you'll be able to look at the gathering storm in California, where the wait is already long and care frequently denied. And now the Left Coast's other darling, Washington State, is planning state controlled health care.
Isn't everyone entitled to government health control? Health is a right? That makes government health control a right? What a tangled web of lies and deceit!
It gets worse.
Health care becomes government property; your health becomes government property. Your health is completely in someone else's control, not yours. You go to the doctor and you say that it hurts here? You're wrong, the politically correct answer is it hurts over there.
The last time Hillary Clinton solidly proposed health control in the 1993, she meant it. (The proposal was put forward as Bill Clinton's, but in fact Hillary was the architect.) Seeking health care outside the government controlled system would have been a crime. Physician patient advocacy by would also be a crime. Yes, look it up.
Government property... your health becomes government property. Your life will become government property. If you get particular, politically incorrect disease, you've lived long enough, you can go ahead and die. This will facilitate Leftist elimination of competing ideas, by the elimination of those who stubbornly cling to those competing ideas. Kill the body and the head will die.
You still think politically controlled, government funded, health care is a terrific idea? Here's a loopy lie from the politically correct American press: "The Bush Administration has outlawed stem cell research in the United States."
Nope, t'ain't so. Stem cell research is quite legal. The Feds fund quite a bit of stem cell research, and even encourage new study of a type of stem cell in adult stem cells.
Federal government funds may not be used in embryonic (fetal) stem cell research for any new lines of embryonic stem cells. There are 22 lines of embryonic stem cells which are already in research. They are grandfathered in (no pun intended), so new federal funds can be used to further research with these lines.
Moreover, fresh lines of embryonic stem cells may be researched with private money. There isn't much private money available for embryonic stem cell research. In Scientific American, in July, 2005. "Embryonic stem cells, unlike adult stem cells, cannot be used directly in therapy because they cause cancer." Maybe that's why the market investor is not attracted to fetal stem cell research. Try telling that to a politician.
Nothing corrupts intellectual power like the abuse of the language. Free speech becomes an endangered species when powerful words, misused, become shortcuts for specious argument and repetitious cliches trivialize noble ideas.
