I was not a fan of the Bush administration while he was in office for several reasons that I’m not going into right now. I have started to warm up to him since he left office because he seems to have the one quality I often look for in an ex-president, the ability to do nothing.Since he’s left office; he hasn’t gone on the news denouncing his successor, he hasn’t appointed himself as a negotiator to some far-flung place, or run off to monitor elections. The fact that George Bush has managed to resist the temptation to stay relevent means that for all his failings, George W. Bush is a good ex-president and I for one hope that he continues to be one.
I got my degree a few years ago and since then I haven’t written many essays. If you don’t use a skill you start to lose it and my skill at writing has taken a nose dive. I thinking about returning to school to get an advanced degree next year and so I’m using this blog to practice. That said, please be as savage as possible when ripping my ideas apart. This isn’t a request for flames, comments like ‘you suck’ aren’t very useful. What I want is comments along the lines of ‘you suck because . . .’
I’ve decided to start off at the deep end by giving my (somewhat unorganized) thoughts on universal government provided health care. My two major objections to government health care are as follows. First, I’m afraid that the quality of American health care will suffer. Second, I do not want to subsidize nor be subsidized by others.
To start with, I’ve got a little bit of experience with how other countries deal with universal health care.
I’ve visited a clinic in Canada and was impressed by how long the line was and how quickly they routed us to the front of it after they realized that we were willing to pay in cash. Good for us, bad for the citizens. As Robert A. Heinlein was fond of saying; “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If you don’t pay in money, then you will pay in time. If health care is free, then everyone will be a hypochondriac draining resources from our hospitals and making it impossible for those of us with a real problem to get care in a timely fashion. Well, unless we have cash.
I’ve also lived in Japan which has fairly cheap, if low quality health care. I say low quality based mostly on the testimony of several friends (mostly nurses, a couple doctors). They told me that every person who can afford it has all their major medical care performed in the United States or by American trained doctors.
I currently live in the Republic of Korea. The best thing I can say about Universal Health Care in Korea is that it’s cheap, not as cheap as my US plan and not nearly as comprehensive but I had a very good plan at my US employer. On the other hand, as with Canada, cheap health care means hospitals that are filled with people, places where a trip to the hospital involves long lines and overworked staff even when compared to their American counterparts.
As Robert A. Heinlein was fond of saying; “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If you don’t pay in money, then you will pay in time. If health care is free, then everyone will be a hypochondriac draining resources from our hospitals and making it impossible for those of us with a real problem to get care in a timely fashion.
The sad fact is, people who don’t have insurance fall into one of three categories; those who choose not to have it, those who have a preexisting medical condition, and those who aren’t marketable enough to get it as part of their employment package.
Let’s start by looking at the first, shall we? One can argue that choosing not to enroll in their employer’s insurance plan is perfectly rational. Barring accident or bad luck, most healthy people in their twenties won’t likely need insurance. For this reason, several choose not to pay for the company health plan. I don’t agree with that attitude but I believe it’s their mistake to make.
The next group that does not have insurance is one I’ve seen paraded in front of news cameras to give their sob stories. I’m speaking of people with preexisting medical conditions. We’re told that the evil insurance companies deny these people money and because of this, they’re deeply in debt and we should all support them. The fact of the matter is, if someone has a preexisting medical condition, then why should I or anyone else be compelled to subsidize their health care costs? But it’s not their fault that they’re sick, people complain and assert that it’s only fair to give them a hand. To this I say, no. No it is not fair to insist that I give one cent to help a perfect stranger no matter how bad their health is. If I should choose to help out of the goodness of my heart that’s one thing, compelling me to help is quite another. Just as people would not be willing to subsidize a poor driver’s insurance premiums, so should they refuse to subsidize poor heath. It has been argued that a medical condition is not the fault of the person who has it and that a poor driver has no one but themselves to blame for their poor record the simple truth of the matter is;as I won’t subsidize a person for living on a flood plain in an earthquake zone, so will I not subside a person for having bad luck.
The last of the three groups that doesn’t have insurance is those that can’t afford to buy it themselves and who do not get it as a benefit of employment. The sad fact is, if a person is not getting insurance from their employer then it’s likely that they’re easily replaceable and their skills aren’t marketable enough to effect anything important if they’re no longer on the market. If they’re not employed and not able to find a job then the market has spoken and their value to society isn’t very high.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the United States will be able to get universal health care right. If implemented, maybe we won’t have to deal with long lines and low quality. America is an extraordinary place and in the past, we’ve done things the rest of the world can only dream of. Hell, it’d be great to hold it up as yet another example of American superiority. But that still leaves one issue I can’t get around. That issue is the way universal health care amounts to a tax on living in America, that it compels me to support people who are either so unproductive or unlucky that they can not afford to pay for their own health care. A friend of mine once asserted when a society pays to support its unproductive members then society as a whole is benefited and that when a society refuses to take care of its least productive members then that society is diminished. I disagree, any society that is willing to use violence to compel its productive citizens to subsidize their unproductive neighbors is inherently unstable and doomed to fail.
This shall be my soapbox from which I shall indoctrinate the world with my dastardly ideology. Coming soon, my thoughts on universal health care.
