Comments on the Comments... Please comment

Since comments can only be so long, I decided to post my reaction to Big Daddy's comments on the main page. I'll also write another posting about a completely unrelated topic so that I can virtually run from this controversy!

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I don't doubt that people are afraid or that they have every right to be afraid that something in their lives will change, I just think it's a little ridiculous the way a chunk of them are acting. I don't think reactions of this nature are helpful in the least. The same kind of reactions to war decisions and spending a few years ago were called unpatriotic, but now the same actions are being touted as the opposite by many. I think it is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic, but an unofficial attempt to filibuster any attempt at reform, which I consider just plain selfishness.

I think it is a poor argument that no one has had time to read the large bill and only lawyers can understand it. The bill has been around for almost a month now, and members of Congress never actually read or write bills anyway. Staffers get the intent of the bill from Congress, then the staffers write it and disseminate it, at which point other staffers read the bill and summarize it for their bosses. And most bills are lengthy and “legal-y”, so to put this one down for its length and legalese is hypocrisy. The legally-trained staffers write it and interpret it just as they have always done.

But I never said I liked the current plan. In fact, the plan I laid out couldn’t be further from any plan that is coming out of congress, perhaps precisely because of special interests, as you pointed out. I do realize, however, that my plan would never work in our current system, so in its place, I am more than willing to accept an insurance company that is willing to get rid of its pre-existing conditions rules, submit to some sort of cost-controls, and stop operating as if only certain people deserve health coverage. There are always special interests at play, but not all of them are considered bad. People don’t complain when Auto companies get billions a year in subsidies after campaign contributions, so why do they complain about this? Because “health care for all” doesn’t fit in with their own entrenched interests.

There is only one study that refutes that 47 million are uninsured, and it does so by saying that there are, indeed, 47 million people who are uninsured, but about half of them can afford insurance but are just not enrolled. This may be because they believe in the virtues of eastern medicine, or they would rather be unhealthy or stick the rest of the country with their bills, or maybe what we consider affordable just isn’t true. Millions of people earn just above the threshold of Medicaid but still cannot afford private health insurance. But even if they could afford it, then this is a perfect reason to mandate coverage. If the argument is that our uninsured numbers are inflated because people are turning down coverage, then make them get coverage. It seems as if people are making this argument to show that reform isn’t needed because things aren’t as bad as they seem, but really the argument is a perfect one for requiring coverage.

I also think it is a poor solution to cut people a check to buy coverage. Even if only about 20 million (per the dissenting study) are not covered because they can’t afford it, giving them the $5,000 (average yearly premium cost) to buy coverage every year would mean $100 billion per year. This would mean $1 trillion over a decade, which is exactly the amount that the first health reform bill was shut down for. Actually, now that I think about it, this would be preferable over doing nothing, but with this price tag, the bill would never get through a committee let alone come up for a vote. Conservatives would make a fuss over the price, and Liberals would scoff at its simplicity.

The government has been there all along to only set regulations, and look where it has gotten us. If you listen to any respected macroeconomist, he or she will tell you that a regulated free market is best for almost every class of consumption except when a system that provides significant externalities is involved, such as education, infrastructure, and, yes, healthcare. The reason is that large systems such as these in the hands of the free market tend to funnel toward monopolization, and prices of monopolies, as we have seen from the example of OPEC, are unruly and cannot be regulated. This is why privatizing education is a really bad idea if we want everyone to have a basic level of education (if all education was private, millions of children would be priced out), and it is also why privatized healthcare has been unattainable for millions of Americans. To say that the government has no place in the development of a country’s human capital (education, health, etc.) is to deceive ourselves. The only countries in the world in which the government does not supply universal, government-funded education are those that are the poorest of the poor. And the only countries in the world in which the government does not supply universal, government-funded healthcare are those that are the poorest of the poor, slowly developing, and us. We don’t seem to realize that investments in the health and well-being of everyone are the best investments we can make.

Oh, and by the way, Euell Gibbons had an enlarged aorta, smoked his whole life, and added large amounts of bacon grease and butter to his vegetables, all of which led to his heart attack at the age of 64 (pretty darn close to the average age for men). Pine nuts, some of which he choked on while having the heart attack, probably prolonged his life.