(Another Belgrade News editorial from April 22, 2005)
Jim Elliot's editorial is followed by my response:
A couple of days ago the Senate debated a bill that would purportedly provide more health insurance coverage for working Montanans. Whether the bill will work or not, I can’t possibly tell you, because the economics of providing health insurance is not my field of expertise; but what I can tell you is that the arguments pro and con were predictable.
Those for the bill recognized that health insurance coverage and the lack thereof is a major problem in Montana, and that the resolution of the issue needs government interference because the private sector just isn’t making it happen.
Those against the bill admitted that health insurance coverage is a big problem, but one that government needs to stay out of. As I listened to their arguments against this particular bill, I quickly recognized a pattern of tried and true arguments designed to kill a bill emerging: “it needs more study; it’s being rushed through; it’s too complex and I don’t understand it; it might penalizes people who don’t comply, and if it does, then it penalizes them too severely; and it gives too much power to the bureaucracy.” Oh, yeah, I forgot, “it will have unintended consequences.”
Whew! It must be bad if you can say all that about it, one would think, but these arguments can be used against almost any major piece of legislation and are often successful, especially if you can get enough people to repeat them. But the fact is, plain and simple, that the opponents just plain didn’t like the idea in the bill. This sort of argument is an opinion in search of a rationale.
A lot of people, myself included, resort to this kind of argument. Hark back to the reasons you gave your folks for not wanting to do homework (it’s too hard, there’s too much of it, I don’t understand it, and the teacher’s mean and trying to punish me.) Really, all you needed to say is that you didn’t want to do it; but that really doesn’t seem like a very strong argument, does it?
Let me tell you one of the highly technical criteria legislators use when voting on a bill: a “no” vote is easier to explain than a “yes” vote. You can always dredge up some kind of rationale for a no vote that doesn’t take much explanation; but explaining a yes vote often takes work.
In order to get people to vote no, you merely have to create doubt in the legislator’s mind, and that’s done by confusing the issue as much as possible. In order to get a yes vote, you have to present a logical case and a coherent explanation, and that, believe me, can be work. Lobbyists know this and are far better than legislators at obfuscating an issue.
But let me digress and return to the issue that sparked this article—health insurance coverage. Is it a problem? You bet your boots, and everyone knows it is, but they differ in how to handle it. There’s the “free market” approach which states that if government would just get out of the way the problem would solve itself. If that’s true, it is solved already, because we in America have done a very good job at doing absolutely nothing.
One senator went so far as to say that socialized medicine—a fair and accurate name for it—doesn’t work in the long run, which is interesting because Germany has had universal health coverage since 1883. But I guess you could make the case that compared to the infinity of time 122 years is short term after all.
Providing affordable health care coverage for Americans is a major issue, and doing nothing about it isn’t doing something about it. I am on record as saying that I don’t much care how people get the health care they need as long as they get it. I have fielded too many cases of constituents with critical health problems to feel otherwise.
We legislators vote on lots of bills we don’t understand because we take it on faith that key legislators do understand it and support it. Frankly, we watch how they vote and follow their lead.
Temerity in the face of crisis is no virtue. We have done precious little to provide health care coverage for working Americans and a little experimentation is better than sitting on our kiesters and wringing our hands—all the opinions in search of a rationale notwithstanding.
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Sen. Jim Elliott (D-Trout Creek) wrote an opinion column about the problems of health care in a recent issue of Belgrade news (Opinion, April 19).
He wrote, “We have done precious little to provide health care coverage for working Americans.”
Aside from being factually incorrect, it is worth or time to read between the lines. By “we’” Senator Elliott means government. “Precious little” means that government is (or should be) the default solution to every problem in society. “Provide” means to extract as much money as possible from working Americans because the government knows how to spend your money better than you do.
Actually, our government has done way too much regarding health insurance and health care, exacerbating the very problems it attempts to solve. Yes, everyone agrees that health care is a big problem. But we must lay the blame squarely at the feet of government.
Massive government programs, legislation that greatly complicates the administration of health care, and continual intrusions into the free market have only made health care more expensive, curtailed access, and created a paperwork nightmare.
Government created HMOs in the mid 1970s, largely due to the efforts of Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. Fast forward to today, where HMOs are regarded as the text book example of corporate greed and assembly line medicine. So who is the chief critic? Why, Senator Kennedy of course.
Government created Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP. Government sets the reserving and surplus levels by which insurance companies must operate. Government creates coverage within health insurance policies that didn’t exist until some activist judge “discovered” it.
State insurance commissioners compel insurance companies to provide free coverage in their policies and forbid them from charging for it. Hard to blame the “free market.” There hasn’t been the “free market” for quite some time in this country.
Senator Elliott tries to isolate the issue by referring to working Americans, but there is no way to compartmentalize the effects of government meddling. If government takes action in one area of health care it will affect other areas. If some citizens receive a subsidy, others pay for it through their taxes, and then they pay again in increased health care costs.
When government sets the maximum amount a doctor can charge a Medicare patient, every other patient pays more for their services via cost shifting.
If government mandates some new health insurance coverage, then insurance premiums must go up. If courts decide in favor of a damaged party and award punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages, the party that ends up being punished is not the doctor who made the mistake, but the insurance company that issued the doctor’s malpractice coverage.
Germany has socialized medicine, and it may even work for them. But they also have health care rationing, 11 percent unemployment and some of the highest taxes in the industrialized world. They trail us in every economic category.
Why should we look to them? We are a representative republic, not a socialist democracy. Or at least, our nation was conceived that way. We have tried to implement one socialist program after another, and every one of them has failed, cost more, and/or delivered less than promised.
Why in the world would we want even more of the same? At what point do we set aside good intentions as our justification for these programs and start to consider the results?
In some sense it is admirable that Senator Elliott wants to help. But it is time for some new thinking. Government has yet to solve a free market “problem.”
If Senator Elliott really wants to help, first he needs to assess the issues correctly. He says, “...we in America (meaning government) have done a very good job at doing absolutely nothing.”
He is wrong. Government in America has done a very poor job with the trillions of dollars working Americans have forked over to it for health care “solutions.”
“We gotta do something” is also a poor rationale for proceeding with and ill-conceived plan. Sometimes doing nothing, or perhaps, undoing some things, is the prudent way to proceed.
Senator Elliott, government health care is a failure. Stop spending our money.
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