It's My Blog

In any discussion about healthcare reform, whether in print, on TV, or on the internet, the argument is always made and assumed to be valid that we must do something so that people with preexisting conditions can have access to health insurance, and therefore health care. Unfortunately for people who love liberty and personal responsibility, both sides of the debate are consistent in their belief that the government must interject itself into the health insurance business to make sure these people can get help. To understand why this is wrong, I will illustrate how the argument of preexisting conditions is simply an excuse for government control (fascism) of healthcare.

First off, let’s define the problem. There are in fact people out there who can’t get health insurance because they have a medical condition that requires ongoing expensive treatment, or one that has a high probability of leading to more expensive treatment. Insurance companies, seeing as they don’t have the luxury of printing their own money, have to make decisions on who they can cover and who they can’t based on their potential incomes versus expenses. If someone already has a cost prohibitive condition, it would be suicide for the insurance company to cover them at the standard rate, so most either don’t cover them or they charge them substantially higher rates.

Now if we want to solve this problem we have to first understand how this came to be. You see, we don’t exist in a realm of timeless concretes; something that exists today exists for a reason, because of a sequence of events and decisions that led up to the present situation. Contrary to popular (and “progressive”) belief, people don’t just wake up one day and find themselves in a dire situation, desperately seeking the help of their fellow man. People get into those situations because of the decisions they make, the actions they take, and the forces of coercion they must face.

In that regard, let’s take a look at the most common health coverage scenarios for people with serious conditions that require ongoing expensive healthcare:

1) They chose to decline coverage. Many young people decide that instead of wasting their money on expensive health insurance premiums each month, they’ll simply opt against having any coverage and pocket the extra cash. This is a gamble and the odds are pretty good, most people save money this way and don’t end up getting coverage until they feel like they need it.

2) They let their coverage expire. There are various reasons that a person may do this, the most common being that they had a job with health coverage as a benefit, lost that job (or quit) and didn’t pick up their own insurance plan once the employee provided one expired, because it is very expensive for an individual to do so.

3) The insurance provider dropped them. While it may seem utterly evil, there are indeed low cost providers who will drop people from their coverage when it is determined that the costs of their future care will be too high. This is a risk you take when you purchase a particular insurance plan.

4) They have never been able to afford coverage. There are currently socialist programs in place to cover these folks, namely Medicaid.

5) They are covered by an employer plan. These people have medical coverage, and even though they have a serious condition, their insurer still covers them.

6) They are covered by a plan which they purchased. These people have taken their healthcare into their own hands and purchased and maintained their own insurance. They made sure that the plan wouldn’t drop them if they developed a serious condition. They have “cadillac” coverage, so to speak.

In every case, the individual involved had a choice, and actually a series of choices. The people who find themselves ill and without coverage (1-4) have obviously made the wrong choices in life, and the person who is covered by their employer plan has arguably also gone down the wrong path. Unfortunately for our country, most people find themselves in one of these situations, and very few end up like number 6, with a “cadillac” plan that they purchased out of their own pocket.

Why is this? Is everyone just an idiot? I think not. The reason so many people make the wrong choices regarding health care coverage is that the government imposes unfavorable market conditions on us all through the use of force. Many states have sweetheart deals with insurance companies that enjoy monopolies or near monopolies through legislation and regulation. Forcefully eliminating competition will always drive prices higher. The FDA outlaws cheap treatments like Marijuana in order to keep their lobbyists from the drug companies happy, and the DEA imprisons millions of people each year for smoking a non-government approved substance. There is an obvious use of force there. Even more regulations don’t allow for insurance companies to offer customized coverage plans, where people can opt to only insure themselves against the most disastrous things, but instead are forced to pay for coverage that insures against plastic surgery and other elective niceties. That is like forcing everyone to buy a BMW or better when all they need is a Civic.

Even worse is the cozy relationship corporations have with the IRS in that they get to write off employee health plans, and employees get to spend pre-tax dollars on corporate provided health plans. This might sound like a great idea, and I’m certainly no enemy to tax cuts, but in reality this is just another example of the evils of income taxation and behavior manipulation through the use of force (in this case, extortion.) You see, the end result of this brilliant tax scheme is that people don’t purchase their own health insurance, but instead they are locked into the corporate plan. This means that when people lose or change their job, they lose their coverage (after a government enforced grace period.) The side effects of this are numerous and dangerous. People tend to go to the doctor more often, seeing as they aren’t paying much for it. Companies work out sweetheart deals, seeing as it’s just a big tax writeoff. Insurance companies slip nice little loopholes in the coverage plans, seeing as the employees don’t actually read the contract, so they can just drop people from coverage at any time. Costs go up for everyone, especially individuals trying to independently purchase insurance, because all of the easy money has been made with corporate plans, and with the government preventing competition, there just isn’t any easily affordable individual coverage out there.

So, how do we solve this conundrum? Well the answer is surprisingly simple: fully restore the individual’s responsibility to buy his or her own health care. Get the government out of the way, let the people provide for themselves, and let charities pick up the slack. It is preposterous to propose that the government should “help” people with preexisting conditions, given that it is precisely the government interventions which have removed the control of healthcare from the individual’s hands. Whether it is the Democrats saying we should have the government own or run the healthcare system, or it is the Republicans saying we should enact piecem
eal “reforms” to fix our current “free market system,” (which is actually code word for the crony capitalist, or fascist, system of government controls,) neither of these solutions addresses the core problem. The cure to our health care problems is to be found in the removal of the parasite known as government.

Practically, this means a few things:

1) Eliminate all taxes, including income, payroll, SS, Medicare, corporate, capital gains, estate, etc. and replace them with one simple consumption tax at the point of sale of finished goods or services. This will allow people to keep 100% of their paycheck and to spend it as they see fit, eliminating the cozy relationship between government and corporations and putting the power to purchase health coverage back in the hands of the people.

2) Eliminate any and all regulations and restrictions on health care. Allow the doctors to figure out which drugs are best for their patients. Allow patients to decide which insurance companies they want to purchase from, regardless of what state they live in. Allow insurance companies to offer the plans they want to offer, regardless of what some bureaucrat thinks. Allow personal responsibility and competition to work. Get out of the way.

3) Eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. Reimburse everyone that has ever paid into those systems using inflation adjusted dollars. This might sound like a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the $60 Trillion in unfunded liabilities we have knocking on our door. Not only that, but every time you go to the doctor you pay a hidden Medicare tax, seeing that you’re paying for your treatment plus the cost of the Medicare patients that the government doesn’t cover.

4) Eliminate the Department of Health and Human Services, and any other agency full of political appointees that determines what we can and can’t do with our own lives. Let the people decide how to pursue their own interests, so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of any other person. End Fascism and restore Freedom.

There. Done. All Settled. It really is that easy, but unfortunately my solution doesn’t involve the accumulation of power through the use of force for any special group of people, so it likely will not ever happen through the political process, until our country collapses on itself and we get the chance to start over.