I posted rebuttal comments on three recent op-eds. My responses are
published below following a brief description of the articles. The responses have some redundancies, but the right arguments can not be made often enough.
The first article is by the NJ Star-Ledger’s aging columnist and former editor John Farmer.
He claims that “Employer-based health care is a thing of the past”.
The only other choice, he claims, is government-based health care:
“In one sense, the question for voters is this: Who can we best trust
to oversee health insurance? The federal government, with its spotty
record for efficiency but whose leaders face the wrath of the voters
if they get it wrong? Or the private insurance bigwigs whose chief
incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’
interest?”
The second article is a Star-Ledger editorial entitled “ ‘Takeover’
claim is GOP’s Big Lie”.
“But no one remotely connected with the Obama administration is
suggesting anything like a government takeover of medical care in
America. Yet the defenders of the status quo conjure up a dystopian
nightmare of ‘Obamacare’ with Soviet-style hospitals and drone-like
doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who
does not. (How they would be different from insurance company
bureaucrats is a mystery.)”
The third article is by Froma Harrop at RealClearPolitics.
She writes:
"The lights must dim around Google's data-storage centers every time
someone does a search for "government bureaucrat coming between you
and your doctor." Foes of the Democrats' health-reform proposals have
been chanting this on the hour for a year..."
After claiming, with some truth, that private insurance company
bureaucrats already do the same thing, she asks:
"But why has the idea of letting the government do what private
insurers do to save taxpayers money become such a hysterical hot
button?"
All three articles have a common denominator. They are examples of
ObamaCare proponents taking the status quo as the given, thus avoiding
the necessity of any analysis of how the government's policies have
created the very problems their "reform" is supposedly designed to
fix. This tactic is vital to their case, because any honest look at
cause and effect would lead to a greatly diminished government role
and more freedom as the logical solution.
Here are my posted comments on each.
To John Farmer –
Posted by zemack
March 02, 2010, 8:33PM
We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he
can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a
real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.)
Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that
fireman. All of the problems that ObamaCare allegedly addresses are
government created. And like that fireman, the politicians - Democrats
and many Republicans alike – now rush to fix the problems they created
with massive new government interference into healthcare. The health
insurance market is at the top of the list of government-created
problems.
Today’s health insurance industry is a government created monstrosity.
The “power” of the insurance companies derives directly from
government interference into the market. Thanks to the tax and
regulation-imposed employer-based, or third-party-payer, system, the
insurance company works not for the consumer of healthcare, but for
some third party. In other words, the consumer is not the customer.
But that’s not the only problem. Thousands of state-imposed insurance
mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue
to benefits – force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands
of political pressure groups rather than market realities, and force
coverages on consumers that they may not want or can afford. These
mandates are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as
“insurance”. The insurance companies are then protected from
competition through interstate trade barriers - imposed by government.
The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to
demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a
political creation. Our fireman proposes to save us from its own
creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government
controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a
government-crippled insurance market. Our employer-based system that
Mr. Farmer laments is in the nature of fascism, or back-door
socialism, in which the private ownership is more of a mirage than a
reality.
The only practical and moral solution is a free market in health
insurance. Our current system is as far from a free market as one can
imagine short of overt socialized medicine.
A free market is one based on the recognition of individual rights,
which means the sanction of freedom of action. This freedom includes
the rights of patients, insurers, their customers, doctors, medical
products producers, and other healthcare professionals to freely
contract with each other through voluntary trade to mutual advantage.
The government’s role in a free market is limited but vital – to
protect the rights of all concerned, including enforcement of
contracts and prosecution of fraud and breech of contract. Otherwise,
people should be free of governmental coercion, which is what the
“free” in free market means.
Mr. Farmer is right that the employer-based - i.e., third-party-payer
- system of health insurance is unraveling. It was inevitable, and a
bad idea to begin with. But he misses the obvious: Our deteriorating
employer-based health insurance system is a failure of statism, not
freedom. Instead, he simply lauds supporters of totalitarian
healthcare, - excuse me, ObamaCare in all of its guises – as “those
who know something” and writes off opponents as ignorant. But this is
only a evasion, and sets the stage for his monumental booby trap –
that our only choice is between socialism and fascism:
“Who can we best trust to oversee health insurance? The federal
government, with its spotty record for efficiency but whose leaders
face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong? Or the private
insurance bigwigs whose chief incentive is to increase profits in
their own and their shareholders’ interest?”
The individual citizen who is free to “oversee” his own healthcare and
health insurance needs doesn’t even warrant token consideration!
Interesting, eh?
Mr. Farmer is dead wrong. The choice is not between government-run
healthcare (socialized medicine) and the status quo (quasi government-
run healthcare). The choice is between government-run medicine (in all
of its incarnations) and a free market.
To the Star-Ledger (go to page 3 of the comments section) –
Posted by zemack
March 09, 2010, 10:03PM
The “Big Lie” is an appropriate topic for the Star-Ledger to
editorialize on in regard to healthcare. But it’s not the Republicans
that are employing it. It is the ObamaCare minions, including the
Editors here, who are employing that tactic to its fullest. The real
Big Lie is the claim that the only choice we have is between Obama’s
“reform” scheme and the status quo. But “the defenders of the status
quo” are not entirely accurate either. ObamaCare, the logical
consequence of which really will eventually be “Soviet-style hospitals
and drone-like doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets
care and who does not”, is not an outright takeover of healthcare. It
is rather
another step in the decades-long, slow-motion advance toward an
eventual full takeover.
As I’ve been arguing here and elsewhere, the missing ingredients in
the entire Left-framed debate is an examination of the role that the
government has played in creating the problems healthcare “reform” is
supposed to correct, and the third alternative – reinstitution of a
free market in healthcare. Despite its strengths made possible by the
remaining free market fragments, all of the problems attributed to
American healthcare are consequences of prior government policies. The
runaway costs and the problem of pre-existing conditions are
government creations. Thanks to our government-imposed third-party-
payer (employer-based) system, thousands of state-imposed community
rating, guaranteed issue and benefits mandates, and legal trade
barriers barring interstate competition, our “private” health
insurance industry is actually a government controlled and protected
series of state-based cartels which is more in the nature of fascism
(back-door socialism) rather than any semblance of a market-based
system.
The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to
demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a
political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an
extension of government power and would not be possible in a free
market.
Of course, making a government takeover of American healthcare
inevitable is what ObamaReform is all about, the Editors’
protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But the Dems have
cleverly avoided concrete specifics in their plan, giving cover for
the Editors’ outrageously false claim that “no one remotely connected
with the Obama administration is suggesting anything like a government
takeover of medical care in America”. No. Instead, their plan contains
the theoretical blueprint for future totalitarian control of every
aspect of healthcare. What does anyone think a 2000 page document is
full of? The trick is that the specifics will come later under powers
granted to government officials, in the form of an unending tidal wave
of coercive rules and regulations.
In an analysis of only a small part of one version of ObamaCare, the
House’s HR3962, Professor John David Lewis cites numerous examples of
this in his Objective Standard essay, which can be read in full in the
Winter 2009/2010 issue (theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2009-winter/
affordable-health-care-america-hr-3962.asp). His conclusion:
“[The plan] will reach deeply into federal and state regulations and
laws, on a scale that will require years for experts to interpret. It
will establish institutions that will be effectively irreversible. It
will grant arbitrary powers to bureaucrats, who will have to interpret
and enforce its dictates.
“This legislation empowers the executive branch, namely the Secretary
of Health and Human Services and a ‘Health Choices Commissioner,’ to
write thousands of pages of regulations, and to force Americans to
comply with them. For every line in this bill, many pages of
regulations will be written.
“The central meaning of both is the repudiation of individual rights.
No longer will Americans have the liberty to preserve their own lives
in the way they judge best—from now on, they will have to conform to
government controls on the most intimate details of their lives.”
The Big Lie is alive and well, and firmly ensconced in the Obama
Whitehouse … and in the offices of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board.
And to Froma Harrop –
Posted by: Mike Zemack
Mar 12, 07:26 PM
“The powers in Washington have clearly decided to keep most working
Americans in the hands of private insurance companies.”
So laments Ms. Harrop. The statement is true, but off by about seventy
years. Decades ago, the Federal government established the third-party-
payer, or employer-based, system of health insurance. This created an
artificial middleman that disconnected the consumer of healthcare from
the provider. Then came thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates
across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to
benefits – that force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands
of political pressure groups rather than market realities … i.e., to
the desires and pocketbooks of the consumer, who is perversely not the
customer. These same insurers are protected from interstate
competition via interstate trade barriers imposed by government.
We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he
can rush to the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real
live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in
regard to America’s health insurance system, the government is that
fireman.
The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to
demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a
political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an
extension of government power and would not be possible in a free
market. Our fireman now proposes to save us from its own creation! Our
“private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and
protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-
crippled insurance market. Our “private” health insurance system is in
the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, and is not indicative
of a free market.
“Those who care to move this conversation to a more grownup level”
start by examining the role that government intervention has played in
placing the healthcare of Americans “in the hands of private insurance
companies.” They will find that it was the government itself.
The argument for “letting the government do what private insurers do”
is a red herring. It is a call for totalitarian centralized control of
medicine by government bureaucrats unconstrained by the need to earn a
profit … i.e., to satisfy their customers. Insurance company
bureaucrats empowered by our government-imposed third-party-payer
system are bad enough. Government bureaucrats possessing the legalized
power of physical force - i.e., a gun - would end the remaining
fragments of freedom to make our own healthcare decisions that we
still possess.
The Supreme Court legalized abortion in Rowe v. Wade based on the
argument that abortion is a health matter that should be decided
solely between a woman and her doctor. Fair enough. The solution to
the problems of health insurance rests with the same logic. Remove all
government restrictions in the national health insurance market.
Restrict government instead – to its proper role of enforcing laws
against fraud and breech of contract, mediating legitimate contractual
disputes between insurers and insured, and enforcing and protecting
contracts and contractual freedom … i.e., to protecting everyone’s
individual rights.
Health insurance is solely a matter between the individual and his
insurer, and their rights to contract freely to mutual advantage
should be protected. The natural incentives of the free market – the
consumer seeking the best value for his money from profit-seeking
providers seeking to expand sales in an environment of real
competition – is the only moral way to “control costs” because people
must consume in accordance with what they have earned and providers
must price their products to their customers’ budgets. A government
that “controls costs” ends up controlling people … i.e., ends up as a
dictatorship.
In a free market “no one is going to come between patients and their
doctors” because no one can come between patients and their insurers …
or their healthcare dollars.
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