The Alternative

I’ll be a card-carrying Communist
By harvest time I’ll be eligible for Medicare. I should be glad because our health insurance premiums are going through the roof at the same rate as my increasing aches and pains. We let our insurance agent do the research and she says it is the best we can do. We pay higher deductibles and get less coverage. Politically, being self-employed doesn’t take advantage of the mob very well. We are hung out to dry when trying to compete with unions, corporations and various associations. There is strength in numbers.
Group health insurance plans had their beginning in the 1940’s when Congress feared a post-war hyper inflation similar to Germany after World War II. Using the short term thinking that is so prevalent today, they set wage and price controls. Employers couldn’t compete for good workers in any way but through offering benefits. Companies could use volume as a negotiating tool with insurance companies for the lowest rates while enjoying a 100 percent tax deduction.
This situation made individual insurance rare. Many self-employed people have a spouse who works outside the home merely for the health insurance; another blow to the traditional family with a parent raising children at home. This situation has evolved into the notion that a family cannot survive on one income, even though closer examination of the issue reveals a ratcheting effect of compensating for lack of a family life with unnecessary luxuries.
As I near 65 it reminds me of 1965, the year our blessed government instituted Medicare. In studying for this article I saw a picture of my future Medicare card. Right at the top it said “Insurance.” Medicare is not insurance any more than crop insurance is insurance. Yet, once people get comfortable with looking at a nation as family, taking your piece of the pie is no longer theft, it is your entitlement.
People under 65 spend a relative pittance on health care. The system we have now has been in place since 1965 for the vast majority of medical spending. It is socialized medicine, poorly executed. There is very little competition to control costs. So any blame for our present problems cannot be placed on free markets or “capitalism.”
Liberals who call for a single payer system as an alternative to our present system have a point. In much of the western world, single payer systems are proving to be less expensive than the complicated mess we have here. (Although I found a case where amputations for diabetes complications were much higher in the U.S. than the U.K. That was presented as a negative by the simple minds at The Huffington Post. But jazz trumpeter, Clark Terry, had that procedure and it improved his life immensely for four years. Always consider the source and think long term.)
Does that mean we need to adopt those socialized systems in an effort to be more like those countries? Consider some of the good points of medicine in the United States before we do that. The whole world looks to us for breakthroughs in research. We have the shortest wait times for service. Those are products of the market oriented portion of health care in America.
Senator Joni Ernst promised to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” My dad said, “Conservatives worship big government the same as liberals; they just think they can do it better.” That is at the root of our poor performance in health care. If Mrs. Ernst had simply said to repeal Obamacare, she would be getting somewhere, but she’s only being another shill for government control in an industry that would do well without any government control at all.
It is time that we, out here in the cheap seats, see that what has been presented as two extremes on the same scale is really a modest difference in how we pass our responsibility on to others through government. The choice is not between socialized medicine and better socialized medicine. It is between socialized medicine and free market medicine.
We had something close to that before 1965. People bought insurance to control risk that would exceed normal expenses, and insurance companies would set premiums to assume that risk on an individual basis.
With group plans and the Affordable Care Act, we end up ignoring individual risks (such as smoking) and insuring for unnecessary risks (such as pregnant men). One-size-fits-all only works if one size really fits all.
My youth was spent in Cold War times. We hid under our school desks to prepare for nuclear war, a good indicator of the wisdom of government. That war was claimed to be about freedom versus communism. Another thing my dad said was, “In the Soviet Union, everybody has to carry a card.”
I get my card in October.
 
I’d be pleased to have any responses or corrections to this article at 4selfgovernment@gmail.com. Or you can visit my blog and join the discussion at www.alternativebyfritz.com.