"National Healthcare"--Star-Ledger Reader's Forum

National health insurance

I have been reading about the various approaches being looked at in Congress to address the creation of a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans. I endorse and support that effort.

The federal government already has contracts with almost all of the insurance companies in the United States and the premiums for federal employees are lower than most companies are charged, and definitely lower than what individuals can get.

Why not simply open the federal plan to all businesses and individuals in the country? That would create a rate-base of 300 million and that rate-base would drive down costs.

The federal government can also open up existing federal programs like Medicare to all citizens as a backstop and a way of insuring that private companies do not take unfair advantage of consumers. We will also have to make provision for the indigents, because having people who are not insured is more expensive than covering them.

We can even have graduated levels of assistance for the working poor.

I want to see the current federal insurance system opened to all Americans using an actuarial rate base of all the people in the nation. This will keep the private companies alive as well as assure medical insurance and the health care for everyone.

This can be a win-win.

George N. Wells, Dover


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 2:42PM
The basic premise underlying the idea of "universal health care" is the un-American idea that the individual has no rights and is to be subordinated to the group, as represented by the state. It is the deadly ideology of collectivism. I submit into evidence the letter by George N. Wells.

He declares that Congress should set up "a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans."

The means by which human needs (and desires) are to be met do not just occur free in nature. They must be created by productive people. There are basically only two ways to acquire the product of another man's labor--by voluntary means such as trade or private charity, or seize it by force. The first is the civilized method; the second is the criminal method. Therefor, the only way that government can guarantee any man-made product such as healthcare is to declare that the people's earnings and the productive labor of the providers belong to "society", and then exercise the totalitarian powers to loot and enslave. There is no other way. When government pays, government sets the terms...on who the money comes from, on who will get what treatment when, prices and salaries, medical technology and innovation, etc.

Mr. Wells declares that "we" should provide for "the indigents" and "the working poor". This is a tacit admission that Mr. Wells believes that the earnings and wealth of others is his to dispose of...the disposition to be carried out by the majority mob's political surrogates. The fact that universal health schemes may be administered by quasi-private companies controlled by the government is nothing more than socialism through the fascist back door.

I support the alternative, free market capitalism. This is the moral system based upon American principles...the principles of individual rights protected by a government limited to that purpose. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, coupled with the sole obligation to respect the same rights of others...a respect distinctly missing from socialized medicine's proponents. Rights are not an automatic claim on the earnings, property, or wealth produced by others.

In a free market, all associations are voluntary. Consumers, providers, insurers, and patients are left free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage. Each individual is free to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others...free from the predatory, phony do-gooders seeking to practice "charity" with other people's tax money.

Government interference is the source of the problems confronting American healthcare. 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.

The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid medicine of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, 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, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Mr. Wells endorses and supports tyranny, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not. I support capitalism and individual rights.