Collectivism In Medicine

Health Care is Ailing, from the Star-Ledger Reader's Forum

Jason Fodeman rhetorically asks: "Is our health system really bad off?" in "Haste makes waste when fixing health care" (April 23). In a word, "yes."

According to a recent Commonwealth Fund Commission report, U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, but does not meet critical benchmarks for quality, access, and other major performance measures. While America spends twice as much per capita on health care, it ranks lower than most other industrialized nations on numerous indicators of overall care; the U.S. score averaged 65 out of 100 over 37 categories, and fell to last for "preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care."

Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide? Yes, we can. Currently, insurance companies have an overhead of approximately 30 percent, which is spent on marketing, administration, shareholders dividends and exorbitant CEO salaries. Medicare's overhead is approximately 3 percent. We could save about $350 billion annually, enough to cover the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office say the U.S. could insure everyone for the money we're paying now to insure seniors only.

-- Larry Siegel, Plainsboro



My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 04/30/09 at 7:39PM
Larry Siegal underscores the fundamental philosophical/moral conflict at the root of the healthcare debate...collectivism verses individualism. He asks:

Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide?

Implicit in that question is the assumption that the wealth and earnings of a nation do not belong to those who produced it, but to the collective, as represented by the state. That primitive view holds that individual human beings have no value except as sacrificial fodder to the whims of the tribe. The representative of the tribe is whoever claims to speak for it, which in this case is the democratic majority as manifested in the government. Mr. Siegel simply assumes that "we" may dispose of the earnings and wealth (i.e., the lives) of whomever "we" please, for the unearned benefit of the "uninsured" or "underinsured" (whatever that means). This is the altruistic premise that individual self-sacrifice for the sake of others is the ideal, which is the moral root of all forms of tyranny, oppression, and predatory government.

America was founded upon the opposite premise...that every individual is a morally independent entity capable of charting the course of his own life by his own mind and effort, and in voluntary, uncoerced, rights-respecting association with others. This is the egoistic premise that each person is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of "humanitarians" wielding the legalized physical force of government, nor as a slave to the needs of other people. America's founding premises lead to a society based upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness held equally, at all times, and protected by a government limited to that purpose.

Mr. Siegel's premise leads to socialized medicine. America's premise leads to a free market in healthcare.

Leaving aside the issue of statistics...which can be skewed any which way and which tell you nothing about the actual quality of American healthcare...and Medicare's alleged low administrative expenses...which is a myth ...I do sympathize with Mr. Siegel that our system has serious problems. Unfortunately, Mr. Siegel, like so many other advocates of medical tyranny, fails or refuses to consider how we got here. But cause and effect is where we must begin.

The fact is, the problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution we are racing towards is to reward the culprit with full totalitarian control. The real solution is one that is not even being discussed in the political arena...a turn towards capitalism and free markets.

The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. Leave that money in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, end government insurance mandates and the third-party-payer system, phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare.

Advocates of socialized medicine (by whatever name you want to ascribe to it) like to take the moral high road, claiming compassionate concern for some downtrodden group. But they never see actual human beings, whom they are free to help through direct, voluntary charity. They give no consideration whatsoever to their fellow men as what they actually are...individual human beings with their own unique values and circumstances. Anyone who would trample the rights of others to act upon their own judgement with regard to their own healthcare deserves not a moral sanction but moral condemnation. Show me someone who would force others to pay for his "compassion" by depriving them of their earnings and their freedom, and I'll show you a phony.

The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo. The choice we face is between being held hostage to government central planners, or liberating each of us...consumers, providers, patients, and insurers alike...to take control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.