The Hidden Cost of ObamaCare

TruPolitics.net is proud to welcome Edward Mahee as a new contributor to the site. Mr. Mahee boasts an extensive legal background, and is an emerging conservative thinker. Expect articles from Mr. Mahee every other week.

“What I am trying to do – and what a public option will help do – is put affordable health care within reach for millions of Americans. And to help ensure that everyone can afford the cost of a health care option … we need to provide assistance to families who need it. That way, there will be no reason at all for anyone to remain uninsured.”

-President Barack Obama, Speech to the American Medical Association, June 15, 2009 

The President of the United States, as he promised during last year’s campaign, has embarked on a radical transformation of the American health care system.  This transformation however, is not only about changing the American health care system, but the American way of life. 

Mr. Obama claims that his intent is to ensure that affordable health care is available to all Americans.  At first glance, this seems an admirable goal.  Who, after all, is against granting people access to health care?  But giving people “access” to affordable health care is not in fact the goal.  People already have access to healthcare, whether or not they are insured.  The issue remains cost. 

Admittedly, health care is costly in terms of money, and for many people that cost can be difficult.  But the solution, as proposed by Mr. Obama, will be costly, not only in terms of money, but in liberty lost by the average American. 

First, the financial costs of Mr. Obama’s plan are staggering, up to $1 trillion over the next decade according to some estimates.  Given the debt this administration has run up this year, one is left to wonder how such sums are to be raised.  One way Mr. Obama can pay for his health care reforms is by raising taxes.  But experience suggests that taxes themselves will not pay for health care costs to be borne by the government.  And like any enterprise, if enough money cannot be found to pay for something by raising revenue, the money will have to be found by cutting costs. 

Cutting costs means paying doctors and nurses less (which will result in fewer people choosing to enter these professions), paying less for hospitals (which will result in hospitals becoming less safe while the resources necessary for maintaining them dwindle), paying less for therapy (meaning fewer options and far fewer new or better options for therapy) and restricting access to health care.

Mr. Obama wants us to view government intervention into the health care space as simply a compassionate move designed to assist those without.  Doubtless, an admirable intention.  But we all know what the road to hell is paved with.  Nobody seriously doubts that the American health care system is in need of improvement.  But the solution proposed by the president is counterproductive.  If the government is trying to reduce the cost of health care, the solution is not to have the government assume those costs and then ration care. 

Sure, every American will theoretically have access to health care (although I suspect the access of those like Mr. Obama and Messrs. Dodd and Kennedy, who have proposed legislation along the same lines as Mr. Obama, will be more equal than access for the average American), but what good is access if it means is a spot on a list to wait to see one of the ever shrinking number of nurses or doctors, or for a bed in the shrinking number of hospitals (which are increasing falling into decrepitude) to be treated, but not with state of the art treatment that a bureaucrat has decided is not cost effective.

Which brings us to another cost of Mr. Obama’s plan to change health care, one which cannot be measured on a balance sheet.  Once the government is in charge of health care, every American will be beholden to the tender mercies of a bureaucrat who will determine when and where we can receive treatment.  The suffering endured by one who waits for hip surgery, heart surgery, or cancer treatment is a cost.  The suffering endured by those with chronic conditions who have to continually await treatment will be a cost.  The suffering endured by those who may have benefitted from a new drug, but cannot because a bureaucrat has determined that a drug is not cost effective, will be cost.  But the greatest cost of all will be how, in the name of compassion and equality, each and every American will lose his or her ability to freely choose whether and when to get health care.

That in the end will be the greatest cost paid under Mr. Obama’s plan, the loss of individual liberty.  We will no longer be free individuals, but merely serfs with the federal government as our noble lord who in return for protection demands from us our toil and our freedom.  And all because people in power think they know better.  They don’t believe in the dignity and inherent value of the individual.  We each must be controlled, and those in power will do the controlling.

-Guest author Edward Mahee from TruPolitics.net