Shots Across The Bow

Healthcare and Insurance

Interesting discussion on healthcare going on over at Bubba's. Here's my take, as posted in a comment:

Why is it a "right" to have access to healthcare? Is it one of the "inalienable" rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence? It isn't in my copy, but maybe I have the abridged version.

Nope, looked it up; not in there.

Well then, maybe it is a human right, not one reserved to American's, but to all people on the planet. Does everybody have a basic 'right' to healthcare? If so, then shouldn't our first act be to reduce the level of care available in the US to the world average, then use our surplus to bring the world average up? Of course, we would have to accept a tremendous rise in infant mortality, as well as a drastic fall in average longevity, but if health care is a right for everybody, we are unfairly monopolizing that resource for ourselves.

You don't like that idea?

Health care is not a right. It is a benefit of living in a wealthy, technologically advanced society. Now we can debate what level of priority we want to give this benefit, how many other benefits we are willing to sacrifice to maintain it, but calling it a right distorts the discussion before it begins.

If you really want to reform healthcare, get insurance out of it all together. Try a little experiment. Track health care costs over time, and see when they began rising faster than the general inflation rate. What you'll find is that the acceleration began when health insurance became more common. You'll see a similar result in auto insurance. When it becomes mandatory, it gets more expensive. The insurance companies claim it is because they have to accept high risk drivers, so everybody's premiums go up. This will also be true of a universal health insurance plan. right now, insurance companies screen their pool to minimize their exposure. Adding in the high risk clients will increase, not decrease the premiums. The present pool may be smaller, but it is a better risk than a larger pool.

The other problem with insurance is that it provides a tremendous pool of money to draw from. Hospitals can get away with charging $20 for an aspirin, because we don't feel the pain of paying the bill. Doctors can charge $75 for a 6 minute office visit because we only pay the co-pay or deductible; the rest comes from our employer. Health insurance is a licence for doctors/HMO's to steal. And they do.

Here's some more research for you. Track the averag salary of doctors against the per capita income over the last 70 years. You;ll see that doctors as a group earned just at or below the national average, then their earnings took off as medical insurance became more popular.

Finally, the large pool of available cash drew lawyers like sharks to blood. Malpractice suits skyrocketed as doctor's wealth increased.

So here comes the insurance company, happy to jump in and provide malpractice insurance, creating another large pool of money, drawing more parasites.

You want to fix health care? Get rid of health insurance.

Posted by Rich at December 16, 2002 1:27 PM