Yesterday, Senator Harry Reid, D-Nevada, brought the public healthcare option, otherwise known as the government option, back to life.
Yesterday morning I had a doctor’s appointment. I don’t know the true cost of that appointment because my insurance company will pay the bill – meaning that I will pay for that appointment, but only indirectly, via an insurance premium paid through a payroll deduction. This is both wonderful and a curse.
Doug Ross at directorblue described Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman’s 2001 essay for the Hoover Digest, “How to Cure Health Care,” worthy thinking that Democrats are ignoring due to statist desires. Ross is correct to a degree in his assessment, and I support Friedman’s approach as a wise solution that will improve health care for the long term; my children and grandchildren. I just don’t think the Democrats are ignoring Friedman for something as grand and evil as what Ross describes as statist desires. I can’t give the Democrats that much credit. The Democratic proposals are more simple minded.
Friedman recommends fixing broken entitlements, repealing employer tax exemptions, allowing consumers to purchase insurance across state lines, expanding health care savings accounts, and focusing health care insurance on what insurance is supposed to be; insuring against catastrophe. Today’s insurance is much more of a form of health care savings account than actual “insurance.” This insurance that is really a spending account causes people to more freely visit doctors because the specific payment to the doctor for the visit, the actual cash transaction, is paid by the insurance company. The patient does not feel pain from the direct cost of the visit because the patient pays for the visit through regular payroll deductions and in their compensation that comes to them not in cash, but in the portion of the health insurance paid for by their employer.
This is where the problem with the Friedman’s proposal lies. He is logical and that logic is in opposition to human nature. Health care is not something we enjoy spending money on. People do not want to pay for their own health care. The insurance market and regulators understood our dislike a long time ago and responded by evolving health insurance into the health insurance system we have today. The current insurance structure hides the fact that we are paying for each doctor visit because we pay indirectly. We like that.
The crux of Friedman’s proposal is that we will each pay for own health care. That will be a painful change for most of us. Under Friedman’s plan, if we are not feeling well we will go to the doctor and we will pay for that appointment from a health care savings account or some other form of personal payment. Insurance will only get involved when we require hospitalization or some other form of emergency treatment. That means that when you have an ailment you will weigh your discomfort against the cost of a doctor’s visit. You might even shop around for a deal. Most people will visit the doctor a lot less.
If you are among the insured than you are already paying for your health care through this process I described, an irrational process that fools you into thinking that you are not really paying.
Humans are irrational. Our emotions override our logical thinking much of the time. This is not a slam on humans, nor a slam on liberal American humans that support Democratic health care reform. It is science. Friedman’s plan for fixing health insurance is a logical plan because it will control spending, but this is one of many cases where logic will likely lose out to human irrationality. Democrats are focused on that irrationality. They will satisfy the voter’s irrational need and thus buy the votes for their reelections. (Many Republicans will try to play to their constituencies irrationality by denying that healthcare needs to be overhauled). Note that according to the Huffington Post, Progressives see the public option as the most realistic way to move the United States toward universal health care – Irrational needs being met with unsustainable promises.
The real problem is not the Democrat’s statist desires, however powerful those may be. The problem is the desire of so many of We the People to have the true costs of living hidden from us. Democrats are willing to provide that service.
Unfortunately, the more we hide the costs, the more people will spend and the less sustainable our health care system will be. The only real solution is to teach people to be self-reliant, independent, and to strive for accomplishments. If we don’t make progress on this soon, the next big government bailout will be for the government run public option.
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In a related healthcare note, WSB Radio’s Washington reporter, Jaimee Dupree reported yesterday that the health reform bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee contains some disturbing, albeit not surprising language. Found in Section 2215 on page 39, “Temporary High Risk Pools For Individuals With Preexisting Conditions,” Dupree found the words, “”If the Secretary estimates for any fiscal year that the aggregate amounts available for payment of expenses of the high risk pool will be less than the amount of the expenses, the Secretary shall make such adjustments as are necessary to eliminate such deficit, including reducing benefits, increasing premiums, or establishing waiting lists,” the bill states.”
Dupree explains that, “if cash is low, then benefits could be cut, premiums could be increased and “waiting lists” could be established.”
Just thought you would be interested in knowing.
