D-Day for health care

I have such fun with these “Organizing for America a Socialist Paradise” appeals from Barack Obama’s flunkies. Wonder who’s hosting the local one?

They’re planning a push for so-called health care reform on Saturday, at least according to Obama mouthpiece David Plouffe:

Remember this date: Saturday, June 6th, 2009. We will look back on that day as the moment when the fight for real health care reform began in your neighborhood — perhaps even in your own living room.

It won’t be in my living room, that’s for sure. I write from my office most of the time.

On June 6th, in thousands of homes across the country, we’ll gather to launch our grassroots campaign for health care. We’ll watch a special message from the President. We’ll build the teams and draw up the plans for winning health care reform the same way we won the election: Building support one block, one neighbor, one conversation at a time. And we’ll put those plans into action.

Give me a break. You (well, more specifically liberals and their allies in Congress) have already put these plans into place. We’ve had the camel’s nose under the tent for so long that half the hump is in there as well. To me that’s the problem.

There’s no prior experience required. We’ll send you the details for dialing into the President’s call and provide you everything you need to make your meeting a success.

You know, I wonder who pays to provide you everything you need? Is that taxpayer money or leftover special interest funds? I presume it’s the latter since “Organizing for America a Socialist Paradise” is an arm of the DNC.

After the election, people gathered at over 9,000 meetings across every state to set priorities for health care reform. Our voices were heard. Now the race is on to make sure Congress produces a plan that reflects the President’s call for reduced costs, guaranteed choice, and quality care for all.

I think they have two words reversed in that sentence – the sentence should read, “reduced choice, guaranteed costs”.

Let’s look at this logically. Unless and until someone reduces regulation and makes it easier to provide health care as a free market, private companies who provide funding (through premiums paid) will escape as they can from a market where it becomes more difficult to create a profit for themselves.

Like it or not, there is a phenomenon in health insurance known as “adverse selection” where those who need health insurance the most are the most likely to seek it out. It’s why those in the business try to build as large of a group as possible, particularly if they can get a large number of healthy folks. And while in theory a group of 300 million would spread costs around, the problem is in the perception of “free” health care liberals try to spread to an unwitting public.

To make that happen, we need to build a groundswell of support in every district and every state, and we have no time to lose. All summer we’ll be reaching out to our neighbors, knocking on doors, serving in our communities, and building a grassroots network strong enough to win.

Oh please…come knock on my door. I need a good argument I would win.

These gatherings on June 6th are just the beginning of a battle between those who fought and believe in change and those who would protect a broken status quo. The stakes for our country could not be greater.

Nor can the cost for our country if you succeed. They are correct that the status quo is broken, but it’s still far better than most other places in that we have the greatest technology and have made many of the advances in healthy living possible (along with making possible some lifestyle choices that aren’t so great…but that usually comes from personal choices made).

These kickoffs will be both effective and fun. You’ll meet likeminded supporters in your neighborhood, share stories, enjoy good company and a shared mission, and know that no matter what this effort requires of us, if we work together we’ll be ready to face it and persevere.

Yeah, let’s have a block party. The real job in all of this will be fighting the special interests who have a stake in this so-called “reform” – unions, certain government employees, senior lobbying groups like the AARP, and some business interests.

Here’s the rub. As I mentioned above, those who need health insurance most are the most likely to seek it out while healthy individuals tend to shy away from the investment. In order to make health insurance profitable from a government standpoint, one solution would have to be forcing those who are healthy to bear the cost of those who are sickly. In our current employer-based system this can be done, but it becomes quite expensive for the employer. In the last 15 years, the palette of benefits a company generally offers has come down simply to health insurance and possibly a 401 (k) account. They’ve also passed along more of the costs through higher co-pays and assuming less of the insurance payment, making the employee take a larger deduction out of his or her check.

Eventually I believe the government needs to get out of health care entirely, as in sunsetting Medicare and Medicaid. Much as I’d love to see it happen though, that’s not going to happen in my lifetime – despite the eventual unsustainability of these programs which provide “free” health care and prescription drugs. (Yes, I know there is some cost to the end-user but it’s small in proportion to actual costs so it may as well be free.) Nor do I believe that health insurance needs to be compulsory – advisable, of course, but not required for everyone should they wish to roll the dice in life.

Instead, I hear various proposals being bandied about to cover everyone with health insurance paid for either by employers or the government. But where does that cut costs?

Or, we can simply go to a British- or Canadian-style single-payer system, where those who are seriously ill have to take their chances that they’ll receive life-saving or life-enhancing treatment in a timely manner. Honestly, I think the Obama folks would like to head in this direction but may use the compulsory health insurance idea as a bridge to get there when private companies can no longer compete in the insurance market due to regulations and restrictions on who and what they have to cover.

The other side of the pincer movement toward socialized medicine comes through a proposal to count employer-provided health care benefits as taxable income. While John McCain had this idea as a campaign plank, he combined it with a tax break. Unfortunately, we all know tax breaks aren’t forever in this debt-ridden economy of ours. And once taxpayers scream about needing to “do something” about this unfair situation, the government would be all too happy to step in and save the day.

It all comes back to money. In the case of all providing parties their goal is to at least recoup their costs in providing health care and medical services.

Doctors need to pay for their lengthy term of education and particularly the skyrocketing costs of malpractice insurance and other overhead in operating a practice – including providing benefits themselves. Yet they are squeezed by shrinking reimbursements from insurance companies and government.

Hospitals are saddled with mounting costs in building state-of-the-art facilities and treating patients (many of whom are here illegally) who have no ability to pay but use the emergency room as their physician of choice. While the left likes to claim that 47 million people don’t have health care the reality is that federal law mandates treatment for anyone regardless of ability to pay. In addition, hospitals also have many of the same overhead issues doctors face.

What those who would attend these Obama-sponsored meetings seem to see as the last resort, however, is the one entity which can print money – the federal government.

They’re confused on one thing, though. While health care is a legitimate need, it is NOT a right.

The road to real health care reform starts by attempting to make the best choices for a healthy lifestyle and doing those things which aren’t congruent to that goal in moderation – but not having the choices made for you by an overreaching nanny state.

It continues by being encouraged to contribute to your own health care costs through tax-free medical savings accounts combined with a health insurance plan that gets back to the basics of covering catastrophic losses, but makes you consider whether some non-emergency or cosmetic procedures are worth the price you’d bear.

On the way, we roll through a healthy dose of tort reform, including the adoption of “loser pays”. This should bring down the cost of malpractice insurance; slowly at first but as the need for “defensive medicine” decreases so should the costs involved which would need to be reimbursed in any lawsuit.

As a lot of smart people have learned for generations, though, the road to health care reform ends with a market-based solution. It’s quite amazing what our prosperity hath wrought despite the best efforts of overzealous regulators, hordes of illegal immigrants and freeloaders looking for a scam, and greedy trial lawyers to game the system to their advantage. People still come here from foreign lands across the globe because they know we provide the best health care anywhere.

Let’s not allow that standard to be diminished in the pursuit of so-called equality, because the only equality Obamacare promises is equality in misery.

By the way, the closest host to me here in Salisbury is a man named Brian Bernard (you can find yours here). I hope he reads this and comments, I’d love to hear his side.