"Health Care Debate"--What about the Third and Moral Option?

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum.

Health care debate

I am perplexed and discouraged by the fight over health care. It's pretty obvious that what we're doing isn't working so well.

In the big picture, it seems to me, if we want our businesses to be competitive, getting health care off their backs is a necessity.

I still hear people, even those who love their Medicare, complain they don't want the government involved in their health insurance. They don't want a government bureaucrat telling their doctor what's okay to do and what's not okay. Meanwhile, I guess, they don't mind some insurance company bureaucrat making those decisions.

I've heard some people suggest we be allowed to buy our insurance in another state where it's cheaper. Think they'll have any preferred providers in your state?

I believe in a compromise: single payer via taxes with a government plan in the mix and private insurance companies competing. This would get the premium dollars off of industry, would let those who want private insurance get it, would let those who want public insurance get it, and would insure all the uninsured. It would help our industries be more competitive, and your health care wouldn't be connected to your employment.

John Smith, Hamilton


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/12/09 at 8:29PM

John Smith cites a couple of problems such as employer-based health insurance and insurance company bureaucrats making healthcare decisions. His solution, though, amounts to "First, do more harm".

All of the problems in American healthcare can be attributed directly to government intervention. The third-party-payer system was imposed by government via tax-code distortions. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer but for the employer, union, or other third party, even though the consumer's earnings pay for it. The thousands of state and federal mandates imposed on the insurers force consumers to pay for coverages that they may not want, sharply drives up the cost of the policies, and actually creates a system of pre-paid healthcare...not insurance. These mandates are really wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. State restraint-of-trade laws prevent a competitive national insurance market from developing, also driving up prices and choices down. Medicare and Medicaid, which have made government the largest purchaser of healthcare products, have so corrupted the market that the normal forces that lead to higher quality and lower costs have been inverted. This is just part of the story.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. It has created huge administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of government and insurance company bureaucrats, and tied people to their jobs.

Yet Mr. Smith's "compromise" would reward the government with totalitarian control over all aspects of healthcare. When the government pays, the government sets the terms...period. You hand your money over to the state, and in exchange you give up your freedom...a lose-lose proposition. This, in essence, is communism. "Allowing" private companies to "compete" against the government-run "option" is merely socialism through the back door, where "private" companies are merely conduits for government control...i.e., fascism. So, according to Mr. Smith, the choices are either the status quo, or some totalitarian combination of communism and fascism.

It's imperative, before we sink to that level, that we consider the third option...the only moral one and the one ignored by both major parties. End the system of compelling everyone to pay for everyone else's healthcare. End all government interference in the insurance market, leaving government to its proper role of protecting individual rights such as through anti-fraud laws and contract enforcement and mediation of disputes. Leave consumers and patients free to decide, along with their doctors, what treatments to use along with prices and payment options. Leave everyone free to plan for their own retirement, to accept responsibility for their own decisions, to take responsibility for their own lives...not be forced to pay other people's expenses. Leave everyone free to decide when and in what capacity to help others, based upon each person's own personal values, assessments of the worthiness of the recipient, and affordability.

Leave insurers and providers free to compete directly for the consumer's business. Leave providers, consumers, insurers, doctors, and patients free to act upon their own judgement, and to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage.

Free market capitalism, the original American system based upon the unalienable and equal rights of every individual, is the only moral path to health care reform. The government's proper role is to protect individual rights, which are guarantees to the freedom to take the actions necessary for the advancement of one's own life and happiness. Rights are not an automatic, unconditional claim on the earnings, property, products, services, or skills produced others. The government's job is not to guarantee health insurance or healthcare to all, but to maintain the societal conditions of liberty and non-coercive association required for people to live their lives and solve their own problems.

Eliminating coercive government interference in healthcare and insurance combined with individual rights in medicine will dramatically reduce the cost and lead to greater quality. That is what always happens when consumers are free to spend their own money and producers to compete for their business. Healthcare, though a high value product and need, is essentially no different than any other man-made product. Consumers seeking the best value for their money, and profit-driven producers seeking to expand sales and grow, places incentives on the side of greater and greater availability and affordability. These basic laws of economics would work no different in healthcare than they would in any other market, when people are left free.

The current healthcare "crisis", if you want to call it that, is not a failure of freedom or free markets. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference.

Today's problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo, as Mr. Smith, would have us believe. The choice we face...for doctors, patients, drug producers, etc...is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.