The debate on the various Democrat health insurance bills has lost all connection with reality and common sense. It has long since become about whether the Democrats win or lose. That is not the issue.

1. There is no crisis

Politicians are always saying we are in a crisis because when the public believes it, they let the politicians do what the politicians always want to do: expand their power and please their base.

The vast majority of people have health insurance they are generally happy with. Health insurance is extremely complex. No one can please all the people all the time in such an emotional, multifaceted area.

The ten or twenty million who do not have health insurance are happy about that. It was a choice they made. Most are young and healthy and rarely need health care. Many get free care at emergency rooms, which needs to be fixed because it’s too expensive and not fair but it’s the only universal health care the politicians have already approved. But emergency room use reform is just that. It does not require that the entire industry be turned upside down.

2. Government involvement has caused most of the current problems

If there was a free market in health insurance, there would be many cheap, major medical policies that cover big expenses you cannot afford out of pocket. That is the kind of insurance everyone should have. Getting insurance to pay for every little thing that is health related is nutty. It would be like car insurance covering gasoline purchases, oil changes, and spilling a coffee on the console.

Government involvement forces insurers to get approved in each of the 50 states and to comply with 50 states worth of laws and regulations. That’s dumb. We need national licensing and fewer rules on how insurers structure policies. The main role of regulators is to make sure the companies are financially strong enough to pay their claims.

In every state, legislators have pet diseases or problems they want covered so they can play hero. So in various states insurers have to cover things like drug rehab, marriage counseling, preventive medicine, and so on. If left alone, insurers will probably offer such things, but not in every policy. Rather, they will offer stripped down and therefore cheap policies for those who want them.

Every time a state legislator plays hero by forcing insurers to expand coverage they are forcing the young and the poor to buy Cadillac coverage that they do not want or need. They are forcing the healthy to pay for the unhealthy. All that forcing insurers to only sell Cadillac policies is a big part of what is driving up health care costs.

For example, I am not interested in paying for a policy that covers drug or alcohol rehab. I have never taken a drink of alcohol or used illegal drugs. I don’t even want to pay for fat people, smokers, sedentary people, or any of that. By buying a policy that gives discounts for not doing any of that stuff, I can save money and I have incentive to continue to live a healthy lifestyle.

3. Medicare is not a success. It’s bankrupt.

Democrats and their supporters repeatedly point to the popularity of Medicare as proof that government health care is great. A recent study said that Medicare refuses to pay more medical bills than any other health insurer.

Medicare is popular because it is free taxpayers’ money. It’s free medical care. If that’s the winning formula, why not free food, cars, houses, and so on?

You say you like Medicare? Great. Enjoy it while it lasts. It goes bust in the next ten years. If you want to expand Medicare to pay for everyone, not just those over 65, it will go bankrupt sooner—like next year.

The same thing applies to to popular VA and Medicaid programs. They all offer free medical care at taxpayers’ expense. The taxpayers, having graduated from lousy unionized public high schools are too ignorant of arithmetic, civics, and economics to recognize that they are headed off a cliff. Many also graduated from colleges where the professors were Communists and socialists who often propagandized them instead of educating them.

 

4. Democrats are not in favor of anything but total government health care for all U.S. citizens nationwide

To the extent that the current plan differs from that, it is nothing but a bait-and-switch play. Obama now denies it, but he is on record as saying he favors a “single payer” system (the single payer is the government). See the video of Obama saying he favors single payer and that it may take ten or fifteen years to incrementally sneak it past the public.

5. When government controls health care, it will be unionized and therefore cost far more than now

Government employees are now more unionized than private enterprise. Union workers cost far more in terms of pay and benefits. Vallejo, CA has 117,000 people. But they are bankrupt because their union police and firemen cost too much. The mayor says they have three police forces and three sets of firemen. One of each is on active duty. The other two of each are retired. In other words, their union retired police and firefighters cost the Vallejo taxpayers twice an much as the guys who are working.

Now the Democrats and the SEIU are going to apply that business model to the health care of the entire nation.

6. Government-run operations always cost far more and provide far less quality than private counterparts.

When I was in the Army, we could never get our trucks fixed—during a war—in Vietnam. The spare parts we needed never arrived. Our mechanics were often warm bodies with no training. Their tools were lost, broken, or stolen by the mechanics themselves. The mechanics were poorly motivated. Bottom line, I never saw a truck get repaired when I was in the Army. We kept a few running by cannibalizing parts from the others. In the 82nd Airborne Division, they would deliberately not attach the trucks properly to the parachutes so they would be destroyed when they parachuted them. Why? It was easier to get a replacement truck than a replacement part for a decent truck. We got no trucks repaired EVER, in spite of having our own garage, automotive shop, motor pool, tools, and mechanics with in each battalion (about 400 guys).

Contrast that with my late mother. When she was in her seventies, and her car malfunctioned, she took it to her local regular mechanic. He would check it, diagnose the problem, call her, and tell her the cost. When she approved the cost, he ordered the part. A guy wearing a NAPA hat would show up in an hour or so with the needed part. The car would typically be fixed by closing time at the garage that same day. Cost? About $180 or so typically. On rare occasions, she would have to leave it overnight.

The U.S. post office is supposed to break even. It almost never has and is now looking at layoffs, shorter hours, fewer deliveries per week, and so on. In contrast, FedEx and UPS are thriving.

Ditto Amtrak.

It has been said that one of the biggest lies is, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” Obama’s promise that the Democrat health care program will not add one penny to the deficit is probably the biggest lie ever told by a U.S. government official and they have told a lot of whoppers over the years.

7. Reform the parts that are broken

There is not a general problem with health care in America. Rather, there are several problems here and there like:

• malpractice lawsuits
• overregulation of health insurers
• disconnecting the cost of health care from the patient: when patients don’t pay out of their own pocket, they act like the money to pay grows on trees.
• recognize that other countries like Canada and Europe can only have government health care when the U.S. has private. When all developed countries have government health, there will be no new drugs and nowhere to go to get the health care you want, not the health care and waiting lists the government will impose. Indeed, without new drugs and competition from the U.S., government health care everywhere will go to hell in a handbasket because there will no longer be any private system to compare to or to attract patients away from government systems.

8. The health care bill is going to pass

The Democrats are going to get what they want because the American taxpayers gave them huge majorities in Congress and control of the White House. Not long after it passes, the nation will go bankrupt as have various state universal health care attempts. Then the problem will not be health care, it will be finding a job and, if you get sick, transporting yourself to Mexico or some Asian or Eastern European country where you can simply pay for health care the way you buy a car or the services of a lawyer from a private hospital or doctor.