Mario Rizzo of ThinkMarkets makes the following points about both the true cost of bigger government liberal health care reform and the honestly of the current health bill as it is presented to us:
1. The various provisions do not take full effect until 2015 or so. Thus the ten year cost totals as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office are misleading, but deliberately so, on the part of the bill’s authors. Only one-percent of the costs are incurred in the first four years. Thus, a $849 billion bill becomes a $1.8 trillion bill when the trick is adjusted for.
2. The elimination of an insurance company’s ability to deny coverage on the basis of existing conditions is an effort to provide a benefit to individuals while hiding the “tax” on the rest. Clearly, insurance rates must rise for most individuals if insurers cannot price according to evident risk. If this were an honest bill there would be an explicit tax to subsidize the premiums of high risk individuals. Costless beneficence is a mockery of the idea of “helping people.” (I do not address the issues of legislative or private alternatives.)
Why should any honest and intelligent person be happy with this? Democracy becomes a delusion when government lies. Of course, this is the usual modus operandi. (Fundamental Healthcare Deceptions).
Noting, not Cost, not Honesty, is More Important than A Moral Imperative
A few days ago I was inspired by Kirsten Powers’ op-ed in The New York Post, “Why cost shouldn’t stop health-care reform” when she wrote:
The richest, most powerful, most amazing nation in the world should treat its citizens who fall ill better than some broken Third World country. If we can afford to try to rebuild Afghanistan with little hope of success, then arguing about paying for Americans to have health coverage seems petty.
Yes. Cost is no object. Sure, down the road, to prevent national bankruptcy, the country will have to impose health care cost controls, but that’s a non-issue: our only concern, now and in the future, is following the Moral Imperative to insure that everyone has access (at some point, in some fashion) to nationally controlled and allocated health care.
There are Many Kinds of Costs
I said I’d try to post examples of how other people from rich, powerful, and amazing nations refused to flinch from the costs of health care reform — monetary and human — in the hopes that we Americans can learn to be made of the same tough stuff as they, and if collectively, nationally, they can make tough choices about their sick and dying citizen, why we certainty can take equally tough stands in our commitment to the moral imperative of forcing Heath Care For All, so help us God!
Here’s one story about what the Canadian’s were willing to do to one of their sick citizens in the pursuit of the moral imperative of mandating health care for all. Sure he had to wait, but we can’t be concerned with costs in the face of the greatest Moral Imperative of our age: Health Care For All!
Now, we’re there yet with the current Senate Health Care bill, but once the bill passes and the provisions are in place, we’ll have HEALTH CARE FOR ALL within the next decade!
Better, more affordable health care requires free-market reforms: the freedom to purchase health plans across state lines; tax reforms like “large” health savings accounts; making health insurance portable, controlled by the individual rather than government or an employer; making medical licenses portable, and more.
To read more about real solutions to the problem of rising heath care costs, see:
Pro-market Alternatives to Democratic Health Care Reform
See also:
- Why Isn’t Government Health Care the Answer?
- What Should Be Done?
- FAQ: Consumer-Directed Health Care
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