Obligatory Health Care Post

We all know that our current system of health care is unsustainable in the long run. Smart people from all sides of the political spectrum tell us so. That’s not debatable. The debate is on how precisely to reform it. That is where Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, fundamentally part ways. And as with all things political, there is the inherent confusion, obfuscation, and purposeful fuzzy thinking.

Work with me as I try to clarify my thinking here.

First, what about this whole “it’s a right!” issue? Liberals – though not all and not exclusively – believe health care a right. This is a fuzzy statement.

No one in the country, even the illegal immigrant, even the poorest of the poor huddling masses, is denied medical treatment. What’s left out is a very important adjective:

AFFORDABLE.

So it’s affordable health care that we all want. But is that a “right”?

I’ve listened to conservative talk show hosts who do not believe affordable health care is a right. They say coy and inflammatory things like, “Is there a right to a luxury hotel room?” They say more thought-provoking things like “Is there a right to education?” “Is there a right to transportation?” “To housing?” How about, “Do we have a right to food?”

These are difficult questions. Difficult because, no, I don’t think we have a right to be educated or a right to be provided transportation or housing. There is no “right” to food or affordable health care. The only “rights” we have are those enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Can bear guns, can speak freely, etc. Affordable health care ain’t there.

To me, though, just saying that there is no “right” to affordable health care is not a satisfactory answer.

This is what it says in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 2288:


Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good.

Concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance.


Now I know we are trending toward an officially secular nation. But we were undeniably founded on Judeo-Christian values. So though those items in the last sentence above are not “rights” per se granted to us by our founding documents, they are a shining example for us to live up to as a society. A bulls-eye for an enlightened nation to aim. Catholics, who make up a quarter of the United States population, are bound by this. Non-Catholic Christians should have no problem with CCC 2288. Atheists may have difficulty justifying why exactly we should provide attainment to these things, but if you want to be a card-carrying member of the human race, I think you need to sign on to this.

And no, this societal benchmark to provide affordable health care does not include abortion. Abortion has nothing to do with health, or life. It has everything to do with death. Death of a unique individual, unique because he or she does not share the same DNA as his or her mother. As far as the right to affordable health care involving such morally ambiguous or psychologically shaky procedures as gender reassignment surgery or breast enlargement or viagra, I don’t know. My heart says no but my head hurts too much right now to know how to logically defend the position. But that’s not the subject of this post. Affordable health care definitely, and obviously, I guess, includes preventive care, life-saving operations, cancer treatment, pediatric care, trauma, etc.

By the way, when I had my surgical procedures to correct my atrial fibrillation, each procedure cost my insurance company one year of my salary. This was a five-hour procedure under general anaesthesia and an overnight hospital stay. I had two such procedures. I have not tallied up all the bills from my 20-day hospital stay last February, but I have no doubt it was close to three years of my salary. Since we live paycheck to paycheck, basically, yes, we would have been bankrupted had there not been health care insurance. Even so, the whole ordeal cost me about $6,000 out of pocket.

When the Little One fell at her daycare center, blogged about here, our insurance company was billed $3,500 for those twenty stitches. For that we paid $0 out of pocket.

Go figure. It’s like deciphering the tax code.

Now, here’s the gist of this post. Just as I think almost everyone would agree with everything I said above, I think you’ll all agree with this distinction: There are morally beneficial and morally detrimental ways to go about making health care affordable.

That being said, I do not believe this Obama-Pelosi-Reid monstrosity is morally defensible.

Why?

Do you want my reasons alphabetically or in ranking of importance? Never mind. I’m gonna give them to you in stream-of-consciousness order.

1) It adds to the deficit and thus the impending financial instability of the United States.

2) Everyone’s premiums will go up, because, well, we now have the government’s hand in it. And with no profit motive to sharpen and focus it, it will bloat and meander and expand and inevitably go up in cost.

3) Any bill that has a provision to hire more IRS agents to help enforce it is a bill we do not want. This alone should terrify any normal citizen.

4) There’s no incentive for businesses to provide health care insurance for their employees. The public option will swell as employers drop health insurance benefits and insurance companies gradually go out of business. From what I’ve heard (and I’m willing to grant that all information about this bill is ideologically slanted because, well, see #7 and #12), the fine businesses will incur will be substantially less than the cost of providing health insurance.

5) Doctor’s are scared of this bill. They spend a lot of money over an eight-year education to become doctors. Now the government will have a say in how and how much they get paid. Take basic human self-interest and basic economic theory, and you know what? There will be less doctors as the years go by. As a result, lines will be longer, waiting will be longer, and quality of care will decline.

6) What the hell are student loans doing in this bill?

7) Why is this bill 2,000 pages long? Forget about the merits or drawbacks to Romney’s Massachusetts plan. This bill, at least in the early days, was touted as based on that plan because “it worked.” Romney’s plan was 70 pages long. Why the extra 1,930 pages?

8) As a corollary to #2 and #4 – my wife’s company takes out roughly $200 a week for her family health insurance coverage. That’s about $800 a month. When I was working, my company offered a family plan to our employees which it (my company, that is) was billed about $1700 a month. So a year or two from now when the wife’s company drops health care benefits and we’re forced to go on the public option, do you think we’ll still pay $800 a month or closer to $1700 a month? Or more?

9) The government has no business mandating its citizens to purchase any certain specific products, in this case, a health insurance policy. This is the constitutional argument many of the states attorney generals will be looking into.

10) This thing was bulldozed through over the will of the people. Every other large-scale legislation that remade American society has had bipartisan support. This does not.

11) Abortion funding is provided for in this bill. A portion of my family’s tax dollars will now go towards killing babies.

12) Obama’s administration was supposed to set new standards for transparency. If Pelosi does not even know what’s in the bill she twisted arms and bribed representatives to get passed, how is Joe Citizen? And how “transparent” is a 2,000 page bill, anyway? It takes me six weeks to read a 1,000 page George R. R. Martin novel, and that’s enjoyable! It would take me about four months to wade through this piece of sh*t, and that’s only if I managed to keep myself from drinking again.

13) Taxes will go through the roof. This is to be expected with a Democrat in the White House, but how much more so with an activist Democrat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? And how, again, do high taxes stimulate the economy and provide jobs?

14) I fail to believe Big Government is the answer to any domestic sociological problem. I challenge you to name one initiative that has been successful. Government always underestimates the cost, always grows, succumbs to mission creep, and needs more and more taxation to sustain itself, and cannibalizes private industry to thrive.

15) It will do absolutely nothing to lessen the unemployment problem. No one’s hiring right now, because no one’s sure what the hell new regulations and penalties and expenses every new hire will bring. If you owned a small business and had five people working for you, and you were lucky enough to be busy, would you honestly take on three new workers right now, or just ask your existing employees to work a little harder and maybe pay them a little more or give them a good bonus? Hmm?

16) As a corollary to #3, say goodbye to a little bit more of your privacy.

17) Death panels! Yes, the name is intended to be over-the-top. But you can bet your behind there’s gonna be a bunch of twerps in suits and ties with big rubber stamps – a red X and a green check mark – going over your requests for the latest lab tests and procedures. And what will be their criteria? Cold, simple cost-benefit analysis. The cost of the test / procedure against the benefit you bring as an economic entity. What else would it be? Tell me I’m wrong, please.

18) And just what is the rationale for allowing “children” to stay on parent’s policies until the age of 26? Normally, while they are still at college they can remain on their parent’s policies with a letter from the school registrar as proof. Is there such a high demand of college graduates to need to stay on Mom and Dad’s insurance? Are we nannying our children into helplessness? Or is it because with the stagnant economy they won’t find a job for a year or two or three after graduating, and thus can’t get health coverage? Yeah, that’s probably that’s the reason.

19) Insurance companies can’t deny applicants with pre-existing conditions … so, why even buy insurance until you actually need it, since they can’t deny you. Doesn’t make sense, unless you actually want insurance companies to go out of business.

20) And why oh why oh why with a real unemployment rate of 17%, if not higher, over the past year, if not longer, why has this been the focus of our President, his administration, the Senate, and the House of Representatives? So much time, money, and effort wasted while real Americans – American workers and American employers – are seriously hurting out there, and this is Obama’s laser-like focus? Seriously? That alone, that defiant and haughty disconnect with reality, is sufficient reason to throw his hopey changey butt out of office in November of 2012.

So, no, this piece of garbage legislation is no cause for celebration. It will harm our economy, harm our pocketbooks, and ultimately harm our health. It contains too many morally detrimental elements. This thing needs to be repealed, and everyone who voted for it needs to be thrown out of office as soon as possible.

Again, please: If you think I am incorrect or ill-informed or just way off base on any points brought up in this post, please help me out. Honestly, I’d like to understand this strange thinking that led to this disastrous bill.

Tomorrow I’ll post on what I think should be done. (It will be about a third the length of this post.)