What Healthcare Reform Was Really About

March 25, 2010 by mattbenchener 1 Comment

This article was featured in The Philadelphia Bulletin (Philadelphia-area newspaper) on 3/28/10. You can read the online version here, or check out the print column each week.

Healthcare reform was not about healthcare.

Hours after the House narrowly passed its historic reform bill, President Obama poignantly said, “This is what change looks like.” He was right—the composition of America, along with 17% of its economy, will never be the same. Though the bill came with some smart reforms, its foundation—the government guarantee of health insurance for all—draws our nation ever closer to European-style socialism. Sunday’s vote was about more than CBO cost calculations, controversial legislative procedure, and complex insurance mandates. Liberal thinkers placed an ideological stake in the ground: Government will be the Great Provider.

Past liberal administrations began the march toward socialization, expanding government control and provision, demonizing capitalism, and shifting responsibility away from individuals and onto government. ObamaCare will take its place in the liberal cavalcade of massive government growth initiatives alongside Welfare, Social Security, and a multitude of entitlement programs. Democrat Senator Dick Durbin said the massive taxes and vast expansion of government required to run the program would simply be, “The cost…of having the kind of America we want to have.” What kind of America was he referring to?

Certainly not that of our founders. Our founders envisioned a country defined by Liberty. Liberty meant extremely limited government intervention: Individuals would keep the fruit of their labor, earn prosperity, and have responsibility for the outcomes of their lives. Government would stay away unless absolutely necessary. Our founders realized government welfare, in any form, would be a zero sum game: What government spends on some it must take from others. Since government could not raise its own revenue, each special program, bailout, or safety net given to some would be provided only by confiscating the earned income of others. This, they saw, was a fundamental infringement on Liberty. The larger government grew, the more Freedom and Liberty shrank.

As the nation aged, liberal thinkers began to believe they could solve society’s ills through government. Personal industry no longer mattered, government would save you. The more extreme ideologues, similar to those in the Obama Administration, felt redistribution was necessary to ensure “fairness” for all. If you didn’t have what others had, it wasn’t your fault. You were a victim. Fairness, forced equality of outcomes, and broad socialization were now the end goals. No matter Liberty. Cradle-to-grave government care would be the norm.

Thus, Americans need not be responsible to save for retirement; government will take care of you through Social Security. Americans need not worry about unemployment; government will provide for you through welfare. Americans need not carefully save to buy a home; Fannie and Freddie will give you a loan. And now, Americans need not work to earn healthcare—even if you make $40,000 a year—government will pick up the tab.

But wait, you say, how can providing for the less fortunate be wrong? In a society like ours, shouldn’t we show compassion? The problem is that forced “compassion” for some means the loss of liberty and private property for others. President Obama’s health bill is funded by $569 billion in new taxes on income that citizens and businesses have rightfully earned.

But for the liberal movement, foundational principles are subservient to ephemeral notions of “compassion” and socialized “equality.” This ultimate march toward collectivism will be stopped for nothing.

It will not be stopped for the public will—polls throughout the past year consistently demonstrated strong national distaste for the bill, culminating in a CNN poll the night of its passage showing nearly 60% of Americans opposed. It will not be stopped for electoral results—one of the nation’s most liberal states, Massachusetts, elected its first Republican Senator since the 1970s (Scott Brown), after he campaigned primarily in opposition to the bill. Despite the landmark election, Democrats dodged normal legislative rules and readily resorted to a procedural tactic to push the bill through. It will not be stopped for vast government overspending—the legislation comes at a cost of $940 billion and will add thousands to government administration. The Congressional Budget Office noted the IRS will need roughly $10 billion and 17,000 employees just to enforce the bill’s personal insurance requirement. It will not stop for the Constitution—for the first time, Americans will be forced by the government to buy a private product (driver’s insurance notwithstanding; you can choose whether or not to drive).

Americans must be aware of the force and aim of the liberal movement. Liberal thinkers believe the Constitution is malleable, the Founding irrelevant, and Liberty a luxury. Passing legislation funded through redistributive taxation, structured on expansive government, and driven by socialist ideology is a means to an end.

A friend of mine wrote to me the day after the bill passed and anxiously asked, “What can we do now?!” We must not forget the significance of the moment. This is a defining time in our nation’s history, and conservatives must carefully articulate what is at stake. This is not about legislative rules or 2,000-page bills. It is about the fundamental character and identity of our nation. Will we be a country defined by Liberty, personal industry, individual responsibility, small government, capitalism, and Freedom? Or will we drift ever closer to a Great Provider Government?

The good news is that, according to a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports, only 27% of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction. November can’t come soon enough.

-Matt Benchener is Supervisor of Newtown Township and Founder of TruPolitics.net

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Flight Delays and Healthcare

January 13, 2010 by mattbenchener Leave a Comment

This article was featured in The Bulletin (Philadelphia-area newspaper) on 1/23/10. You can read the online version here, or check out the print column each week.

Nothing quite says “Christmas” like holiday travel. And nothing says “holiday travel” like a three hour delay at the Philadelphia airport. This year’s experience was uniquely telling.

My wife and I left our house hours ahead of our flight time, encountered almost no traffic, breezed through security, and made it to our gate an hour before boarding. It was far too easy. Then my wife, herself a frequent traveler,  made a grave mistake. Upon boarding the plane she said to me, “This is the easiest trip I’ve ever taken; everything’s gone so smoothly. Knock on wood.” Only there was no wood to knock on.

Sure enough, an hour later we were sitting in a 90 degree plane cabin in the middle of winter (are there really no vents on airplanes?) waiting for a small mechanical “fix.” The captain announced it would take less than 5 minutes to fix the problem—apparently the crew loading the baggage had left a cargo door open.

Of course, the five minutes became nearly two hours. We watched as countless workers drove by the plane to deliver baggage elsewhere, maintenance other planes, and direct incoming traffic. We even had visits from mechanics that weren’t “qualified” to close the door. A businessman sitting nearby dryly remarked that it wasn’t in their “union job description” to close doors. He continued saying, “In no other industry do we expect such consistently poor service, bureaucracy, and inefficiency.” “No, there’s one more,” I responded. “Government.”

The unfortunate truth of my Christmas travel story is that I have dozens more like it, as do most travelers. The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that close to 25% of flights arrive late—where else is a 25% error rate acceptable? This, of course, does not account for mishandled baggage, poor service, and various TSA hassles.

The incompetence in the airline industry is nearly exceptional. Nearly.

Enter the federal government, society’s shining example of inefficiency and bureaucracy.  Operating outside the normal constraints and principles of private industry, the federal government has run at a loss to the tune of $12 trillion. In other words, the U.S. government has spent so feverishly and with such little regard to its expenses that it now owes over $40,000 per U.S. citizen to its creditors. General Motors would be proud.

Beneath that debt are countless examples of waste. Economist Brian Riedl of The Heritage Foundation uncovered $72 billion in lost taxpayer dollars due to government payment errors in 2008. Government auditors recently completed a five year study examining all federal programs and found that 22% (with a cost of $123 billion annually) provided little or no assistance to the populations they are supposed to serve. In November, the Associated Press reported that government agencies wasted more than $98 billion on improper tax credit and benefit distributions.  This all led Senator Tom Carper, chair of the Senate panel on federal financial management, to state, “It goes without saying that these results would be completely unacceptable in the private sector, as they should be in government, especially at a time of record deficits.” Senator Carper was just skimming the surface.

Just as “flight delay,” “lost baggage,” and “impossible-to-open bag of peanuts,” have become synonymous with “air travel,” “bureaucracy,” “red tape,” and “waste” have become synonymous with “government.” So why do we put up with such poor quality and inefficiency from both groups? Because we have to.

In many ways, the airline industry is a quasi-monopoly. Consumers traveling, for instance, from New York to California, fly close to 100% of the time, even though they expect significant delays and hassle; there is simply no other reasonable travel option.

Government, likewise, suffers the same monopolistic disease—the government has a monopoly on government. You cannot “buy” another federal government, and emigration is constrained by international law, community ties, and nationalistic impulse. Government operates in anything but a free market.

The result in both cases is the stark absence of the basic competitive forces that drive improvement and innovation. Economists Nick Abraham, Joshua Hall, and Ben VanMetre recently wrote the following about the U.S. Postal Service, the government’s “business” that lost $6 billion in 2009: “It is a quasi-monopoly, which does not allow for competitive forces to eliminate inefficiencies and determine better ways of operating. The postal service is a textbook example of a monopoly that, because of a lack of competitive pressures, faces little incentive to minimize costs and thus continues to operate at inefficient levels.” The same can be said of all government.

Aside from monopolistic factors, a portion of government’s poor quality is flatly unavoidable. A democracy will always be subject to political pressure—while businesspeople make decisions for economic purposes, politicians make decisions for political purposes. Agency appointments (made as political favors without regard to merit), special interest programs (made as political kickbacks—see the multi-billion dollar Stimulus), and expansive bureaucracy (a factor of both), are evils of democracy that will not fade. An organization without competitive pressure, subject to unprecedented institutionalized red tape, and driven by political consequence will rarely deliver an efficient, high-quality product.

That is why the best government is small government. Our founding fathers saw wisdom in limited government, power in unfettered capitalism, and liberty in personal responsibility. With its inherent inefficiencies and short-comings, we ought to keep as much of society out of government control as we can.

And yet, Democrats are now working to reconcile legislation that will place 15% of our economy under government control. The same federal government that bankrupted Social Security and ran up record deficits will now expand its bureaucracy by an estimated 150,000 employees to run health care. We had better hope their error rate is less than 25%.

-Matt Benchener is Supervisor of Newtown Township and Founder of TruPolitics.net

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Freedom, Bureaucracy, and Healthcare

October 16, 2009 by mattbenchener 13 Comments

This post is written by guest author Edward Mahee. Mr. Mahee has an extensive legal background, and is an emerging conservative thinker. This is his seventh posting for the site.

During the recent debate over whether and how to reform America’s health care system, Americans have been asked to consider why the President’s proposed overhaul is warranted.  We are told that the health care system needs to be reformed to cover the uninsured, while at the same time we are told reform is necessary in order to control spiraling costs.  We are left to contemplate how we can expand the health care system through the federal government, while at the same time controlling costs. 

We’ve been told to shun experience and common sense, since either will tell us that any plan to reform health care through government control will neither improve coverage or control costs.  We will continue to be admonished by the media to allow Congress and the Obama Administration to govern by emotion, as we hear endless stories of the health care system gone awry.  This, of course is not to be hard-hearted, as errors do happen and people do suffer as a result. We just shouldn’t expect Congress, the Obama Administration, or the media to tell us similar stories of those suffering as they wait for treatment on government waiting lists, hoping their number is called when a bureaucrat says “Next!”

But the health care debate is part of a larger discourse regarding the relationship between the government and the citizens of the United States.  What is the proper role of government in the United States?  This country was founded on the idea that all men are created equal and have inalienable rights, and that governments are created to protect and sustain those rights. The key notion is that each individual is personally endowed with rights that other persons, and especially the government, are duty bound to respect and protect. 

This means that America was founded on the principal that each man or woman, individually, was free to make of his or her life what he or she chose.  That also meant we relied on voluntary associations to assist with community building.  People helped each other, invested in each other, supported each other and cared for each other.  America became prosperous through the effort of free individuals able to keep the fruit of their labor, with the support of friends, family, voluntary organizations, churches, and other institutions created and sustained by individuals choosing to do so.  The government was there to ensure that courts were open, criminal laws were enforced, contracts were honored, and the borders kept secure.

Fast forward to the 1910’s.  Since the inception of the Progressive Movement and its successors in modern liberalism, political elites have tried to overhaul this system.  We are told that the system of free government and free enterprise is alternatively heartless and cruel, or individualistic and isolating.  We are told further that the only way to have just and good society is to have everyone pull on the same rope, forming a true community, backed by the power of the federal government.  Our self-appointed elites will guide us into making a better world. 

The key observation, however, is that in this world view the rights of the individual are not central.  Instead, what is central and essential is the guiding hand of the elite. Individual rights, in order for society to be remade, must subordinate to the needs of the community as determined by those in power.  And to enforce their dream of remaking society according to their own designs, they take away individual freedom through coercion and taxation – all for “our own good.”

Fast forward again to today’s health care debate.  We hear very little from proponents of the Obama Plan about the rights of individuals.  In a free society, patients, nurses, physicians, and hospitals are free to contract with each other for treatment under whatever terms are mutually agreeable. However, over the past 70 years, both the state and federal government have colluded with insurance companies to increase their power over health care decisions.  As each effort by the government to make things better has come to pass (by increasing its own power, of course), the state of health care has worsened, and government claims the need for increased intervention. 

Finally, we come to the ultimate effort, putting the whole system under the control of the federal government. The results are predictable if Congress and the Obama Administration succeed—those in power will have more power to direct and control society.  And as they play the part of Leviathan, ordinary, once free people will be reduced to the hope that their name is called next on the bureaucrats’ list.

-Edward Mahee for TruPolitics.net

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The Undeniable Facts on Universal Healthcare

August 26, 2009 by mattbenchener 2 Comments

The past month has witnessed intense, sometimes rabid, debate surrounding President Obama’s healthcare plan. Much of the discourse on both sides has been marked by emotion, fear, and banal rhetoric. It is time Americans consider the facts on universal care.

Fortunately for us, universal care has been tested for decades in countries similar to our own. We need not debate the hypothetical or theoretical about what might happen—our counterparts in Britain, Canada, and Europe serve as examples of what will happen:

Access

Access to quality care in countries with socialized medicine is markedly worse than in the United States. According to Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University’s Medical Center, Canadian and British patients wait twice as long as U.S. patients to see a specialist, have elective surgery (knee or hip replacements), or get radiation treatment for canhospital signcer. Many of these patients must wait for over a year, sitting on long, backlogged lists to receive government care.

According to economist Thomas Sowell, 27% of people who require surgery in Canada, and 38% in Britain, must wait four months or more to be treated. By contrast, only 5% of Americans must wait that long. Additionally, the incidence of colon cancer is 25% higher in Canada, a result of the fact that patients must wait an average of four months simply to receive a routine colonoscopy. A recent report from the Fraser Institute in Canada also shows that Canadian patients wait an average of ten weeks to receive an MRI, just to discover what is wrong with them. As Mr. Sowell points out, that is an exceptionally long time for a suffering patient to wait.

With regard to certain specialty services, the statistics are similarly disconcerting. The U.K., for example, offers a public-option dentistry plan for all of its citizens. The British National Health Service recently reported that 20% of patients were unable to get a basic dental checkup in the last two years due to rationing quotas.

Cost

The total cost per patient is believed by most experts to be about 40% less in the U.K. and Canada than in the United States. This is to be expected, as U.S. care is of much higher quality technologically and pharmaceutically. Consider, for example, that there are more than four times as many MRIs per capita in the United States than in Britain or Canada. The cost calculation also does not account for President Obama’s proposed initial outlay of over $1.3 trillion to fund the program.

More importantly, however, the majority of the cost savings come through rationing, as government chooses the most cost-effective, rather than the highest quality treatment for its citizens. In Canada, 44% percent of the drugs approved by Canadian health authorities are not allowed by the healthcare system due to their high cost. The mortality rate for Canadians with colon cancer is 10% higher than in the United States, in large part due to the fact that the top two chemotherapy medicines used in the U.S. to treat the disease are not available in Canada. Why? Because they have been deemed “too expensive” (RCP – Rationing Healthcare).

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently ruled against the use of Lapatinib, Stutent, and Aricept because they were not seen as “cost effective.” Despite outrage from doctors in the U.K. over the importance of the drugs, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, stated that “there is a limited pot of money” which might be better spent elsewhere. This is just one in a long string of examples surrounding rationing by cost.

As Thomas Sowell poignantly noted, monetary costs may be lower “in countries with government-run medical systems—if you count only the money cost, and not the time the patients have to endure the ailments that require surgery, or the fact that some conditions become worse, or even fatal, while waiting.”

Survival Rates

The impact of limited access and government rationing is decreased quality of care. Mr. Atlas reports that breast cancer mortality is 88% higher and prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in the U.K. than in the U.S. In Canada, the total cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the United States.

Satisfaction

The majority of Americans are happy with the care they currently receive, while the vast majority of people in countries with universal programs are dissatisfied. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding” (Health Affairs Journal). That number is the exact opposite for Americans. According to the Wall Street Journal and Rasmussen Reports, 74% of voters rate the quality of care they now receive as good or excellent. Perhaps this is why, as a McKinsey Co. study reports, 40% of all medical travelers come to the United States for medical treatment.

The bottom line is that we need not look far for examples of universal healthcare’s failure. The statistics are telling, and Americans deserve to be made aware of what they are facing.

-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net

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ObamaCare’s Opposition Comports With Reality

August 24, 2009 by mattbenchener Leave a Comment

This post is written by guest author Edward Mahee. Mr. Mahee boasts an extensive legal background, and is an emerging conservative thinker. Expect articles from Mr. Mahee every other week. This is his fourth posting for the site.

Recently, supporters of President Obama’s healthcare plan have claimed that the rising tide of opposition to the plan is the work of hucksters, conspirators, and other malefactors.  The protestors, we are told with assurance, are either toothless and witless hicks, or are too well-dressed and well-spoken to be real protestors.  The healthcare escapade has been very revealing, both of the Obama Administration and of its opposition. 

President Obama’s swift rise to power was built on, more than anything else, air—the power of his rhetoric.  Unfortunately for him and his supporters, however, actual policy initiative must comport with reality.  His healthcare proposal simply does not, and people have finally woken up to the danger. 

Liberalism holds itself as an ideology that deals with problems empirically, dealing with facts and reality, while it claims its opponents deal with problems beyond the cloud of unknowing.  Yet, with healthcare, as with so many other things, the promises of liberalism cannot be kept. 

Mr. Obama and his acolytes are right when they say that the current healthcare system is broken and financially unsustainable.  Medicare and Medicaid are financial black holes, which if not dealt with will destroy the federal budget, and by consequence, the currency and the economy. 

However, Mr. Obama’s solution is to make millions more people dependent on the federal government for health insurance and to increase federal expenditures on healthcare by trillions of dollars. Mr. Obama risibly claims that his plan will increase coverage (and quality) and decrease costs.  He might as well try and convince people that 2+2=5 (if he did try, CNN or The New York Times would be quoting some mathematician somewhere saying that 2+2 can in some instances equal 5).

Because people have finally caught on to this, they have begun to move in great numbers to voice their opposition to Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan.  Mr. Obama is learning the hard way that “hopey-changey” talk is powerless against the immutable laws of arithmetic, especially when ordinary people have a much sounder grasp of the concepts than the administration, the sycophantic media, or the hapless politicians who are trying to argue with people who have actually read the bills in question.

Mr. Obama and his friends in Congress and the media have done their best to quash the opposition.  They have resorted to ridicule and insult, even bussing in their own counter-opposition to town hall meetings (paid for by ACORN).  But the great thing about the American people is that once moved, they will not be intimidated by cheap insults or threats.  The counter-opposition may have fancy signs and misinformed bumper-sticker slogans, but the real opposition has passion—a genuine passion whose source is the fear that this administration is bent on taking away their cherished freedom, while at the same time spending the country into bankruptcy. 

No doubt in the days ahead we will hear more tales from the media of the heroic Mr. Obama standing athwart the great unwashed, bravely facing the tide of shallow closed-mindedness.  We will see more stories of healthcare protestors who are bringing arms into these meetings to intimidate the brave liberals who are only trying to do good by their constituents.  None of it will be true. 

The people who have been showing their spirit at these meetings, and voicing their opposition to Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan, are simply free citizens exercising their rights.  They are genuine opposition, and their passion comes from their understanding of a very simple truth: Flowery rhetoric and heart-wrenching sob stories cannot make 2+2=5, and any policy that tries to make that equation work will only end in disaster.

-Edward Mahee from TruPolitics.net

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Liberty and ObamaCare

August 3, 2009 by mattbenchener 2 Comments

This article was featured in The Bulletin (Philadelphia-area newspaper) on 8/10/09, and The Bucks County Courier Times on 9/6/09. You can see The Bulletin version here, or check out the print column each week.

Government RationingPresident Obama may see resistance to his healthcare proposal from a group he was not expecting: Obese Americans. A new study in the journal Health Affairs found that obesity-related health spending costs $147 billion annually, and that obese Americans spend an average of $1,400 more per year on health expenses than those in a healthy weight range. The research ties closely with an earlier study in the Health Affairs Policy Journal showing that obesity creates a 36% increase in inpatient and outpatient spending, and a 77% increase in medication use. The findings led RTI health economist Eric Finkelstein to say, “Unless you address obesity, you’re never going to address rising health-care costs.”

So why should obese Americans worry about President Obama’s universal healthcare proposal? Shouldn’t they be happy that their increased costs will be paid for by the government? Not exactly.

ObamaCare rests on the idea of cost control through government intervention and regulation. By limiting extraneous tests or procedures and identifying cost-ballooning health risk factors, President Obama’s plan hopes to guide the healthcare market to greater efficiency, allowing the government to offer inexpensive care.

This theory of cost control through regulation is where the administration claims it will save money in the long run, or “bend the curve” of health spending.  Recently, Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, said it more poignantly:

“Whether it’s tonsillectomies or hysterectomies…there’s no benefit in terms of the health of the population…some experts…estimate that we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system.” What Mr. Summers is referring to is rationing and regulation: In order to control costs for the whole, government will control or limit care for individuals.

The foundation of ObamaCare is the idea of collectivism, that what is best for the whole (the collective) is what is just for the individual. So, if you choose to have a “needless” tonsillectomy for your child, and the procedure raises the overall cost of care for the nation, you’ve done something wrong. Your choice has hurt the collective, so your choice must be limited. Under ObamaCare, such indiscretion will be forced out of the system.

Fundamentally, collectivism shifts responsibility and choice away from you and onto the government. Currently, it is your choice what procedures and medicine are available to you and your family. Under ObamaCare, if a procedure falls outside of the government’s cost-efficient estimates, it will be disallowed. If a prescription is deemed “cost-ineffective,” it will be deemed unnecessary.

If you think rationing is unrealistic hyperbole, you need only to look to our Canadian and British counterparts. In Canada, 44% percent of the drugs approved by Canadian health authorities are not allowed by the healthcare system due to their high cost. In Britain, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently ruled against the use of Lapatinib (a drug that prolongs the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer), Stutent (a drug to help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients), and Aricept (an Alzheimer’s drug that delays dementia) because they were not seen as “cost effective.” Despite outrage from doctors in the U.K. over the importance of the drugs, Peter Littlejohns, NICE’s clinical and public health director, stated that “there is a limited pot of money” which might be better spent elsewhere.Rationing

So how does obesity factor in? Studies show that the vast majority of Obese Americans are overweight by choice (the remainder have genetic or thyroid conditions), and therefore raise costs drastically for the collective because of their personal lifestyle. Under ObamaCare, a preventable choice that damages the whole is simply unacceptable. Indeed, Democrats have already proposed a massive tax on sugary drinks and trans-fatty foods; it is easy to imagine caloric control limits or compulsory weight reduction programs for the obese.

And why stop there? The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that “healthcare costs for smokers at a given age are as much as 40 percent higher than those for nonsmokers.” Shouldn’t everyone that participates in ObamaCare be required to quit smoking? And what about alcohol consumption, high carbohydrate diets, or high stress jobs? Each has been linked to increased medical costs. In a collectivist system, such choices must be limited.

Addressing the prospects of universal care in the United States, Scott W. Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at Stanford University’s Medical Center put it best: “There is no mystery here—it has been proved the world over that when government dictates prices on services, those services become unavailable. And when bureaucrats dictate medical care, it is the patient who suffers most. Directly or indirectly, choice becomes limited, and health care becomes rationed.”

What the government provides, it also controls. What the government controls it also rations. Perhaps now more than ever, Thomas Jefferson’s words ring true: “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have… The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” On healthcare, we would be wise to heed this warning.

-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net

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Political Snapshot: Healthcare Proposal Faces Critical Deadline

July 27, 2009 by mattbenchener 2 Comments

In the face of eroding public support, President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hope to have their controversial healthcare reform bill through the House before the August Congressional recess. They now have just five days to do so. Failure to pass the legislation before August would be President Obama’s first major Congressional loss.

Right: President Obama’s proposal has been widely criticized by Republicans for its high cost, tax hikes, and social welfare undertones. Republicans hope to Obama and Pelosipostpone the vote on the bill in order to rally public opposition to what they see as a sharp move left in domestic policy. The postponement would also be a major political victory for Republicans, who have thus far been steamrolled by the new president. Facing a 256-178 minority in the House, and lacking the ability to filibuster in the Senate, Republicans have been unable to dent the president’s aggressive agenda. On healthcare, it seems President Obama may have overstepped his bounds, and Republicans are hoping to use August to demonstrate that Americans oppose the radical change.

Left: While the majority of Democrats favor President Obama’s proposal, two key contingents within the party are holding up the vote. The first is that of the 52 “Blue Dog” Democrats (fiscal conservatives), who are concerned with the CBO’s projection that the bill will expand the deficit by nearly $300 billion. The second is a group of 20 freshman and sophomore Democrats from moderate districts who worry that the proposed surtax will place an undue burden on small businesses. Most analysts believe Democrats will need the support of both groups in order to pass the bill. Ms. Pelosi has said she remains confident the bill will be passed.

TruPolitics: The healthcare proposition before Congress, if passed in its current form, will be one of the largest, most dramatic reforms in U.S. history. It will change the face of healthcare, which accounts for close to 17% of GDP, creating a domestic policy more in line with European socialism than American libertarianism. In light of such monumental change, Americans deserve the time it takes to fully understand the substance of the proposal (over 1,000 pages long). They deserve legislation refined through rigorous debate, careful study, and bipartisan discourse. This will take time, and August provides that window.

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi are worried that postponement of the vote will give Republicans time to rally resistance to the bill. They see the growing tide of opposition to a socialist system that Americans will flatly reject if they understand its implications. They are afraid, and they should be.

A Washington Post/ABC poll reported last week that 33% of Americans strongly disapprove of the president’s approach on healthcare, versus just 25% who strongly approve. The poll also notes that opposition to President Obama’s healthcare proposal among independents has jumped from 30% in April to 49% in July. The Lewin Group recently issued a report stating that if the House bill becomes law, 83.4 million Americans, almost half of those with private coverage, will lose their private insurance as employers drop it to push them to the public plan. Over 170 million Americans have health insurance (80% of the population under 65), and according to the Wall Street Journal, 89% of this group like the care they are currently receiving. The president knows he is quickly losing ground as Americans understand the full implications of universal healthcare, and he knows he must act quickly.

There is no rational reason to push the vote through before August, other than the purely political desire to ram through a key Democratic agenda item. Americans should have the chance to understand what they are facing–for something this drastic, Americans simply deserve better.

-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net

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Universal HealthCare’s Key Arguments

July 13, 2009 by mattbenchener 1 Comment

ObamaCareRunning a website and writing for multiple newspapers, I receive a tremendous amount of feedback on a weekly basis. That feedback ranges from positive to negative, rational to emotional, and from conservative to liberal. Of all the posts and articles I’ve written, however, no single topic has incited as much reader response as healthcare. It is something that Americans are clearly passionate about, and may define the next decade of reform and legislation.

As such, I’ve compiled overriding themes from reader responses, and addressed the arguments here (quotes are from actual reader voices):

1. The rich think that healthcare reform is unnecessary because they can already afford quality care.

“The rich and well to do will always have whatever care they need – what about those hardworking middle class families who need it and don’t have it. Maybe we should just keep breaking their backs.”

This is a classic class warfare argument, attempting to give the moral high ground to the poor while demonizing the rich. In essence, the reader is saying that the rich are invalidated because they do not feel the same impact as the poor. The argument, however, is grossly misdirected.

Everyone agrees that healthcare needs reform—the costs are as high for the rich as they are for the poor. The root issue is the same for both groups, but the relative impact is different. For a wealthy person, high cost means less discretionary spending. For a poor person, high cost means no healthcare at all.

While it is true that the status quo impact is different, the impact of reform most negatively affects the 80% of the country with healthcare. Should that 80% dismiss the opinions of those without healthcare because the impact of reform differs greatly? If you apply the logic of the reader’s argument, then discussions of reform should remain only with those who already have healthcare. Just because status quo impact is different, it does not mean the rights of either group are invalidated.

The truth is that both sides have a powerful stake in reform, and the rights of both groups must be respected. The real question, then, is whether or not healthcare is a fundamental Constitutional right.

2. As the richest nation in the world, we have the moral responsibility to provide healthcare for our citizens.

“I like to believe that we live in a civilized society in which all citizens are concerned for the health of the society as a whole. A civilized healthy society should include healthcare for all its members to insure that everyone has access to and is treated equally when it comes to basic needs.”

This argument again attempts to legislate morality from the seat of government. It forgets that liberty is the historical linchpin of the American experiment. When government intervenes in society, it necessarily strips liberty from its people—it decides for you. When the government spends a dollar, it spends your dollar. It is simply deciding on your behalf where your money should be spent. If President Obama wants to pay for healthcare for all Americans, Healthcarehe must take your money and pay for the healthcare of those who cannot afford it. In other words, universal healthcare is forced charity.

If you believe that healthcare is a moral issue, then you have the right to give your money to help those in need. But government should not be the legislator of that charity. This does not mean that healthcare is unimportant, or that the nation is uncompassionate. It simply means that you have a right (in liberty) to decide where your money is spent.

America may be the richest nation in the world, but that does not mean that its wealth should be forcefully redistributed. You cannot trade one value (government welfare) for the most essential value (liberty) and claim a moral high ground.

3. Those without healthcare are not responsible for their lack of coverage. They are the victims of an unfair system.

“My job was outsourced to Manilla…I’m stuck until I’m able to find a good paying job because of THE RECESSION THAT GWB AND YOU gave to all of us.”

“In all likelihood, you are lucky enough NOT to have any chronic conditions and assuredly have not had to avail yourself of the high cost of medical care, I have and know that other Americans have…it is unfair.”

Our Founders believed that the greatest sin of government was to strip its people of liberty. This belief spurred the Revolutionary War, and has defined our nation since its founding. Liberty, our Founders said, was found in the pursuit, not the guarantee of success, happiness, and wealth. That distinction is critically important, because the ability to pursue those things is present without government control. The American Dream is that anyone can become anything by the power of personal will and industry, not government provision.

The Founders’ hope was that Americans would be responsible for their own outcomes. When the government attempts to force those outcomes, it infringes on the liberty of its people. Certainly, some people face difficult uphill battles while others are privileged. But that is the reality of a free society. The beautiful reality of freedom is that anyone can succeed; the harsh reality is that many will not.

The alternative to freedom is a government controlled and regulated society, where freedom is disdained because of its unequal results (see China; Russia; North Korea). There is no utopian middle ground between liberty and tyranny.

On healthcare, each individual must earn quality care through hard work and industry. Otherwise, we face socialist policy that has failed so many nations before our own. The fact is that in America you are given the opportunity to succeed, and to succeed enough to have health coverage. There are exceptions to this rule (disabled; children etc.), and we largely provide for them. But to apply that exception to the whole is to soil the American Dream of industry with the socialist notion of casualty.

-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net

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Political Snapshot: Obama’s New Healthcare Proposal

June 15, 2009 by mattbenchener 1 Comment

This is a new feature on TruPolitics.net. Political Shapshots offer a brief, concise summary of a current issue. Each Snapshot has a representation of the left and right perspective, as well as the TruPolitics take on the issue.

Last week, President Obama began his endorsement of his new socialized healthcare proposal. The plan, the first in the step toward universal healthcare, would create a “public-option” government-run insurance program. This taxpayer funded public insurance agency would offer inexpensive coverage to compete directly with private insurers. Government run healthcare is perhaps the most aggressive of President Obama’s policy initiatives, and fierce debate has already begun on Capitol Hill.

Right: Republicans have come out strongly against President Obama’s proposal, asserting that the plan would destroy the private insurance industry and weigh heavily on a growing deficit. Republican strategist Karl Rove stated this week that “If Democrats enact a public option health-insurance program, America is on the way to becoming a European-style welfare state…we won’t be able to undo the damage.” For Republicans, a loss on universal healthcare would be crippling, as the plan represents a dramatic shift left in a key private industry.

Left: Democrats have been touting healthcare reform as a remedy for the nearly 20% of Americans (under age 65) that are without health insurance. Liberal activist groups state that healthcare is fundamentally a right, and the inequity and high-cost of the current system forces out certain socio-economic sectors of society, namely the poor. The Obama Administration hopes that the public option government insurance program will create more competition in the insurance industry. The benefit, they claim, would be twofold: 1. Lower prices across the board due to increased competition; 2. Access to affordable healthcare for low income families.

TruPolitics: The healthcare system desperately needs reform. Premiums and costs are exorbitant, and both doctors and patients desire change. The answer, however, is not socialized healthcare. Nor is the answer President Obama’s clever first step in that direction.

The Obama Administration’s claim that its government program would reduce costs through increased competition may be correct. But that reduced cost comes through increased government control over society, with the government using taxpayer money to create an artificially deflated market. The price tag for healthcare reform, says the Obama Administration, will amount to $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years—a heavy cost for a country already entrenched in debt.

Most troubling is the creeping influence of socialist policies, with the Administration continually seeking to redistribute wealth and widen its role as a welfare state. Yet again, President Obama wants those who have wealth to bailout and support those that do not. Those that already have health insurance will be paying for those that do not. His public option healthcare plan would artificially depress market prices, force out private insurers, increase government bureaucracy, and create the moral hazard implicit in all welfare programs.

Healthcare is a privilege, earned either as a benefit for working for an organization, or through earned and saved income. It is not a right; it is not provided for in the Constitution and it is not meant to be equally guaranteed by the government. Healthcare desperately needs reform, but the answer is not a thinly veiled attempt to bring a failed socialist policy to America.

For more on the universal healthcare debate check out President Obama’s Moral Hazard.

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President Obama’s Moral Hazard

April 8, 2009 by mattbenchener 25 Comments

This article was featured in The Bulletin (Philadelphia-area newspaper) on 4/9/09, and the Bucks County Courier Times on 7/5/09.

“Universal health care for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how.”

-President Barack Obama

Obama Giving Healthcare SpeechPerhaps you saw this shocking headline last week from the Associated Press: “9 Patients Made Nearly 2,700 ER Visits in Texas.” From 2003 to 2008, these patients visited the ER at an average of once every six days, each visit paid for by local taxpayers. With an average cost of over $1,000 per visit, these 9 patients alone cost taxpayers approximately $3 million.

Imagine if this occurred in your town, and at your hospital. Imagine if you saw your taxes steadily rising because a small group of people decided to abuse a vital service in your community. Imagine if your husband or wife desperately needed medical attention, but was held up because of someone else’s indiscretion. Now imagine this on a much larger scale, spanning across the country to each healthcare provider, doctor’s office, and community. That is the picture of socialized healthcare, a picture that must be addressed as President Obama’s budget moves through Capitol Hill.

The President’s budget, passed in different versions by both the House and Senate last week, includes $634 billion to move the country toward socialized health care. The budget proposal says that this massive spending is only the first step in the process: “The Budget calls for an effort beyond this down payment, to put the Nation on a path to health insurance coverage for all Americans. However, additional funding will be needed.” Most analysts believe the full cost of President Obama’s socialized healthcare plan, once enacted on a national level, will reach $1.6 trillion. To put that number in perspective, if President Obama decided not to fund socialized health care and to instead write a check to all taxpaying citizens, each taxpayer would receive approximately $12,300. Which would you prefer? Which would stimulate the economy more?

But the cost of the program is only the beginning of the problem with President Obama’s proposal. The more serious flaw with socialized healthcare is highlighted by the Texas ER case: Where there is no cost, there is no discretion. The Texas ER case is a fundamental example of moral hazard–the prospect that a party insulated from risk will behave differently than if it were fully exposed to the risk. If a driver, for instance, knows that no police officers are patrolling his road, he will be more inclined to speed. The risk factor of being pulled over has been removed, so he acts with little regard to the law. The same is true with the financial bailouts-if the downside risk of failure is removed, or success is guaranteed by the government, then investors will be inclined to take unreasonable risk to attain unprecedented profit.

Simply put, the nine patients in the Texas ER case abused the system because they had no reason not to. The government, by paying their bills, had removed the fundamental risk factor of healthcare: Cost. So, with a free medical system at their fingertips, and no disincentive present, nine patients used critical ER resources and staffing 2,700 times in five years.

President Obama’s healthcare proposal does not stray far in likeness or in form from the Texas ER case. Fundamentally, President Obama wants the government to provide either free or extremely cheap healthcare to all citizens. In function, all essential costs would be covered, with a sliding scale of government payment increasing for lower income individuals. Those using the healthcare system would have no stake in the system; moral hazard would almost demand abuse. At best, the reduction of the key risk factor of cost would lead to significantly impaired discretion.

Socialized Healthcare

The fallout from socialized healthcare would be immediate. The system would be flooded with appointments, procedures, and visits; some of them legitimate, many of them irrational. Cost for any abuse of the system would be passed directly to taxpayers, while healthcare as a whole would be buried beneath bureaucracy. America would suffer the same damage as our British and Canadian counterparts, where patients must wait up to three years for important procedures like hip replacements due to patient backlogs. There is a reason members of both countries continue to come to America for medical procedures. This all, of course, is not to mention the flaws in government control and price regulation, the disincentive for doctors to excel, and the exorbitant burden placed on state governments to run the programs.

At the base of it all, however, we are taken back to the Texas ER case. A system with no cost is a system without prudence–moral hazard always reaps abuse. Taxpaying citizens would pay for someone else’s healthcare, and worse, for someone else’s indiscretion. It is not only a fundamental redistribution of wealth, but a fundamental redistribution of risk and responsibility.

Socialized health care, like most social government programs, sounds wonderful in theory. Shouldn’t everyone have the ability to get reasonable health care? Shouldn’t the sick be cared for? We can’t simply throw the sick out on the streets and let them suffer, can we? That line of reasoning is certainly understandable, and justifiably evokes feelings of compassion for the needy. In the end, however, government is not meant to be run by emotion or even compassion. It is meant to be run on principle, prudence, and justice. And we must always remember that every government dollar spent is a dollar taken from its citizens. That action must always be met with prudence, and never moral hazard.

-Matt Benchener from TruPolitics.net

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